To the Victor all the Spoils
by A.D.Spinner
Summary: Even if she could not peek through the slits of his mask, that time she could feel it, a scorching gaze pinned on her little frame. It unnerved her, for the wrong reasons. She suddenly understood how foolish she had been for indulging so long in their little game, but from the wrong conclusion. AU F!DB/Miraak
1. Hunt

**To the victor all the spoils**

**Author's warning:**

**This story is M and will contain initial non-consent, Stockholm Syndrome, sexuality, many situations that will be in the grey-scales of morality, and a convoluted plot that is an elaborate excuse to write explicit sexy scenes, thus refrain from reading if you know it may offend you or make you too uneasy!**

**This story was supposed to just be a dramatic one-shot with an unsettling vibe and instead it overflowed to cover more or less ten chapters (that I will post after a good ol' revision)! I did not have the evil heart to leave both of them in such dismal misery and so I slowly turned the plot towards a more soft ending.**

**1.**

**(Nir)**

She had always believed Miraak's plan in the end was to kill her, to devour her own dragon soul.

That's why she did everything in her power that month in Solstheim to locate him, even make a pact with a conniving Daedric Lord, to reach the Summit of Apocrypha.

The Last Dragonborn was ready to fight the First to the death.

She had always thought that otherwise she would have never gotten rid of him.

She should have known better.

With hindsight, those little dissonant details in his actions should have risen some suspicions, but from the very beginning she got sidetracked by his constant taunts. He had goaded her until the very end.

"_Fate decreed that you had to die, so that I could win my freedom."_

He had led her to believe so, doing little to correct her assumptions.

While their swords clashed in an impasse of brute strength, Miraak's voice reverberated from his mask unnaturally soft, almost like he was revealing her some sort of confession, a strident contrast to the raw force he was exerting in combat.

She hadn't perceived it then, that part of truth he was concealing, yet revealing to her, with that simple, seemingly plain statement.

She had been too naive then, or not twisted enough to understand his behaviour.

There had been a fleeting moment when she tasted the giddy taste of near victory, lending her enough energy for a final push, and make him fall back with a flurry of blades.

_"This cannot be. I am master of my own fate!" _

In his hiss there was a strange touch of resentment. She mistook it at first for concealed panic, before he turned the tables of their fight.

"_Kruziikrel, ziil los dii du!"_

Her body already ached with fatigue, when she watched horrified how the dragon evaporated in a luminous mist and replenished his adversary with new strength.

"_Ah, now we can finish this."_

In his voice there was an odd fluctuation of lurking eagerness.

It was a matter of time before he got her cornered, she was too exhausted to keep up with him like before.

She shut her eyes and waited for the final strike, the mortal stab that would steal away her life.

She realized with bitterness, that she would experience it too now, the answer to that question he once so casually laid to her.

"_Do you ever wonder if it hurts, having your soul ripped out like that?"_

It happened in their second encounter. She should have noticed how his body flinched for a moment after he turned towards her, but she was too angry to catch such detail at that time, too preoccupied for her stolen dragon soul to care about anything else.

The winter wind blew violently against the barren and snowy mountain peaks, but she marched resolute, step after step, towards his ethereal projection.

With the hood down, her long red hair floated around in disarray, matching the wild emotions that distorted her angry visage. She had lost her Hevnoraak mask during the recent fight, when the dragon shouted a F_u__s __R__o __D__ah_ so powerful that almost threw her down the nearest precipice.

As she could not hurt his intangible form, she resorted to verbally vent her righteous fury, just few feet away from his masked face.

She was going to yell a chain of such vivid profanities, that even a chief bandit would have blushed at hearing them, when he surprised her, uttering with strange softness that unexpected question, before vanishing away.

She lost the count of how many times she had cursed the moment she lost that mask. If she had known what that insignificant event would have unleashed, she would have replaced it with another mask, and not donned a pretty circlet like she did.

It did not matter in the end though, she discovered much later that the damage done that day could not have been mended so easily.

"_Send him back where he came from. He can await my arrival with the rest of Tamriel."_

In retrospective she had found it funny, that at their first accidental meeting he had just surmised the Last Dragonborn to be a man.

She just gave the matter a fleeting thought, she was so used to it by then, but it insidiously stung her pride, poisoning her common sense.

Perhaps that was why she kept antagonizing him at every chance, spurring him on, driven by that foolish desire to show him off her real strength.

And he urged her to go on, in his own twisted way.

She should have caught those subtle changes after their second conversation, but she did not.

"_...So you have slain Alduin... I could have slain him myself...You have no idea of the true power a Dragonborn can wield..."_

She was too deafened by the growing echo of his initial dismissive derision.

From then a pattern was set, every time she risked her life to slew a dragon, he would appear behind her back and steal her hard earned prize.

Dozens of dragon souls, at one point she had stopped to count.

Sometimes his projection would have taken shape just few inches behind her neck, to tease her with the brief illusion that finally - finally! - the dragon soul was flowing into her. Or so she thought that was the reason.

"_This dragon's soul belongs to me."_

He murmured that to her ear during one of their last meetings, his voice a soft deep rumble, before she made the stupid decision to return to Solstheim.

Lydia had tried to warn her, that her one-sided competition, so the worried Housecarl had labelled it, was getting out of control.

"_It takes a strong will to command a Dragon's soul, perhaps you aren't as powerful as you think."_

He started to openly tease her after their fifth encounter, when she tried to punch his incorporeal chest out of frustration, making a total fool of herself.

He did it on purpose, just to get her all riled up for his own dark amusement. Even if she knew that, the urge to helplessly rage at him was stronger than her, especially when he just stood there and chuckled at her temper tantrums.

Lydia wasn't there that time, so she didn't hear the obnoxious and patronizing cadence he used, just to provoke her into accepting his unvoiced challenge.

She should have listened for once to her wise friend, and not have taken his bait.

All her tasks slowly fell second place to the rush to snatch away first the next dragon soul.

At first she would immediately drop her current mission, if a dragon was unfortunate enough to be spotted flying in the skies. Then it degenerated in active hunting, with the help of Delphine's maps.

"_Thank you for your help. We will meet again soon."_

Their brief interactions degenerated too.

That time she almost grasped the picture of the situation she was in, when she mused irritated, that his teasing threat almost sounded like he was looking forward to see her again. He was getting cocky too, invading more and more her personal space with his translucent incorporeal form.

Perhaps she would have not been so clueless, if his form had been tangible.

She brushed it off as the typical power game, aimed to display with arrogant confidence what a petty menace he considered her to be.

She had been a foolhardy inexperienced young woman, too blinded by her insatiable need to prove herself and being recognized.

"_I grow ever stronger, Dragonborn. One step closer to my return."_

In their last verbal exchange, he stood only few inches from her chest and spoke to her with a low and soft guttural tone.

She deduced long time ago, from his deep vocal timbre, his burly physique and tall height, that he was a Nord. She always believed to be tall enough for a Breton, but she barely reached his shoulders.

Even if she could not peek through the slits of his mask, that time she could feel it, a scorching gaze pinned on her little frame. It unnerved her, for the wrong reasons. She suddenly understood how foolish she had been for indulging so long in their little game, but from the wrong conclusion.

She told Lydia they would travel to Windhelm that same night.

She should have fled away to Cyrodiil.

"_And here you are, just as I asked. How very kind of you. _

_I presume you've already seen some of what I've accomplished. _

_There is so, so much more to be done. I'm glad you're here."_

An alarm bell should have chimed in her head, when he worded his greeting in that oddly gentle way. Her resentment and her certainties had grown tenfold though, after the recent attack of that dragon, Krosulhah. The beast had claimed that he had commanded her death. So she completely overlooked the fact that he welcomed her with unusual warmth, and instead stirred him up, with her usual cheeky jeers.

"_Then let us see who truly has the soul of the Dov."_

She shouldn't have prodded the slumbering dragon.

Their first physical confrontation started with a paced exchange of lethal spells. She quickly discovered that he was too well versed in the destruction branch of magic and so chose to change tactics. They soon shifted to close combat when she unsheathed her familiar Daedric blades.

"_I know things the Greybeards will never teach you."_

He took advantage of their proximity, when their blades and his staff were locked in a first power struggle, to flaunt his greater knowledge.

She was too concentrated in keeping her stance though, to catch the dark innuendo his smooth deep intonation imprinted on the phrase.

To her ears it just sounded like his umpteenth tentative at mockery.

"_Felling Alduin was a mighty deed."_

She should have been paying more attention to what he kept saying to her.

"_The Greybeards taught you well."_

To the way he so uncharacteristically continued to praise her.

"_You are strong. Stronger than I believed possible."_

To the odd undertone that transpired from each assessment he shared with her.

She had been a fool, to just internally gloat over his acknowledgement of her strength, instead of hearing the husky tone he used to talk to her.

His admissions and the defensive positions he continued to keep during the fight, spurred her to double her efforts, with little care of preserving better her depleting endurance.

And then after she cornered him into shouting those four cursed words, he stopped to sweet-talk her. He went full offensive.

"_You fight valiantly against fate, but I am stronger here."_

His voice thundered, amplified by his metallic mask, almost deranged as he charged.

He did not give her a chance to slip out of defence once. She was weary, her muscles too tired to ward off his brutal retaliation. She soon found herself knocked against a column, the blade of his poisoned sword grazing the pale skin of her neck. There was no need for him to state the obvious out loud, she let her blades drop to the floor and closed her eyes in bitter defeat.

She yelled in surprise, when instead of receiving the final blow, she felt his hands roughly grab her arms and throw her at his feet. She reopened her eyes, wide like those of a caught deer, only to stare in utter disbelief at how his massive frame straddled her hips, as he unbuckled his belt.

She didn't think, just shouted with all the remaining strength in her lungs.

Her unexpected _Fus Ro Dah_ hurled him away far enough to give her time to crawl some feet away, but a paralysing spell hit her bent form, the same one he used that time, when she unwittingly disturbed his wretched existence in Apocrypha and scrambled his plans.

"_Did you think to escape me?"_

His growl was feral. She could not move, but just furiously blink the tears away.

He gripped his sword and tore with precise cuts the leather clasps of her armour and her modest undergarments, leaving her chest and legs completely exposed to his sight.

She blushed in shame as he perused her naked body. She could not see the expression in his face, but she could catch the little twitches of arousal he was not able to repress from his moves.

He pulled off his gloves and carelessly threw them next to them, and his bare hands visibly quivered, when they feverishly touched her pale, large breasts, as he gazed at them, behind the black slits of his inexpressive mask.

He didn't take his own clothes off, but just freed the thick hardness restrained beneath his trousers.

She was thunderstruck and disoriented at seeing his swollen erection.

Men did not react to her that way, they fled from her in fear. For the first time from her arrival in Skyrim, she was scared out of her wits, she couldn't stop crying like a baby.

He did not let her a chance to digest the notion, nor gave her any warning, but just spread her legs around his waist and entered her.

It burnt, how it burnt. Worse than all the planes of Oblivion put together.

She would have screamed at the top of her lungs, if she wasn't paralysed.

He stilled though, all his muscles tense. She thought the Divines had still some mercy for her.

He remained motionless for a long while, his masked face buried in the crook of her neck, his hands tightening around her soft thighs. She could hear his heavy fast breathing and a guttural moan escape from his throat when he slowly started to rock his hips against hers, once, twice, then a gradual faster pace, that got rougher, more frantic after each push.

She knew he was far gone when he groaned without restraints, and buried himself in her with frenzied wild abandon, crushing her petite frame under his heavy bulk.

"_Geh__... __Undaargaar__..."_

It was surreal to hear that voice, his voice, moan with pleasure next to her ear.

He shivered uncontrollably and then collapsed over her. A strange, alien warmness spread through her lower sore abdomen.

She had no idea for how long she kept staring blankly over his shoulder. Those two dragons were still flying in the greyish sky, while he just laid on her, spent, still inside her, and she felt sick.

_**Dragon language:**_

**_Kruziikrel, ziil los dii du = _**_Kruziikrel,__your soul is mine to devour_

**_Geh, undaargaar = _**_Yes, finally_


	2. Devour

**2.**

**(Du)**

She awoke on an unfamiliar bed.

Rays of intense light forced her to immediately shut her eyes, and swiftly turned around her sight.

It took her some time to focus the outlines of the objects concealed in the shadows.

Untouched, almost translucent white pages floated sluggishly over her head, pierced by beams of light so intense, that let her see how dense masses of dust particles twirled in the static air.

Those rays came from a ceiling so high and dark that seemed unreachable, like an inscrutable abyss.

She tentatively rested a bare foot on the floor, and felt a warm rough texture touch her toes.

The pavement was a carpet of pristine pages and had piles of books scattered everywhere. Even the walls, from what she could see, where long, unending rows of bookshelves. And then she noticed the still figure that sat in the darkest corner.

She instinctively huddled up, to cover her naked form.

A deep brief chuckle echoed in the silence.

"_Modesty is unnecessary now."_

She blanched. That voice. Miraak.

It was him, without that cursed mask.

She charged.

"_IIZ SLEN NUS!"_

"_FEIM ZII GRON"_

Her shout, to her dismay, only passed through his now ethereal body, and instead hit the stone chair, encasing it in a block of deadly ice.

He lazily stood up and walked towards her, while she glared at him with full unconcealed hate, waiting for the effects of his shout to disappear, her muscles ready to strike.

He stopped her punch as fast as she threw it, grabbing her wrists with astonishing precision, and forced her to lie down against the bed. She trashed like a savage caged beast, but it was useless, he was on top of her again, pinning her wrists over her head.

"_A true dovah till the end."_

Twisted appreciation dripped from his growl and a smirk curved his dry lips.

For the first time she could watch the terrifying yearning he had concealed to her behind his mask, the undisguised lust that clouded his unnatural, pitch black eyes, the only visible sign of Mora's Daedric corruption.

"_I won. Accept it."_

It was the same tone, that patronizing inflection he had used in all their previous brief conversations, but only now she detected it, the undercurrent crave hidden beneath.

"_I know you are angry, it is understandable. I did not foresee that you were... untouched."_

She tried hard not to blink or to ponder the implications of that statement.

She refused to cry again, not in front of him.

He pressed a hand in her mouth, before she could Shout at him again.

"_I can paralyse you like before, or use the Bend Will Shout on you. Or I can be gentle and show you. Your choice."_

That was no choice. She turned her face away, she could not look at him without bursting in tears.

She just hoped he would be over with it soon.

He took her silence and her lack of resistance as some kind of tacit consent, so proceeded to calmly undress himself. She heard when his robes and boots fell to the ground with a soft thud, but she kept still and did not glimpse at him once. She refused to look at his arousal again.

His frame returned to soon to stand above her. She felt the mattress sink as he leant over to kiss her exposed neck.

She cringed at the sudden contact of their naked bodies, but shut her eyes and remained motionless. She could avoid to see anything, but she wasn't able to ignore how his large hands slowly caressed the curves of her sides, or the way one cupped her breast with unexpected softness, while his wet, heated kisses slowly descended towards her chest, leaving a trail of goosebumps on her sensitized skin.

She almost jerked away when his lips touched her other breast, and a burst of heat rushed on her cheeks for the shame, when his tongue licked her nipple.

She bit her lower lip in chagrin and managed to keep still, but could not stop a shriek and clamp her legs when his fingers slithered between them. He forced them to spread enough with one of his knees as he deepened his touch, never shifting his attention away from her breasts.

She felt a mixture of undiluted panic and scorching fever she had never experienced before, flow from her thundering, deafening heartbeat, pervade her mind, threatening to choke her. Her breathing quickened, and she felt the tingle between her legs intensify, as her folds dampened.

His rhythmical strokes slid with more ease.

She stifled a whimper, pressing a fist in her mouth, and bit its knuckles hard, almost leaving a mark. She refused to also give him the satisfaction of eliciting any reaction out of her.

That simple little act was enough incentive tough, and he had already noticed her increasing wetness too. He emitted a dark, pleased chuckle and left her chest to nibble her earlobe.

With a firm grasp, moved away her hand from her shut lips.

He devoured her neck with hungry kisses as his fingers continued to thrust deeper and deeper, while his thumb teased the little bud hidden in her mound.

She could not suppress the little moan that escaped, not while he kept pulling her hand away from her mouth. She internally cursed at herself, that itch never grew so unbearable intense when she satisfied herself.

Her brief moment of yielding though did not seem enough to appease him, though from his smug expression she could see that he was enjoying her helpless state.

He rested a large hand on her tiny flushed cheek and forced her to look at him, straight in his bottomless, pitch black eyes.

"_This is only the beginning, dovahdin."_

The way he almost purred that warning should have frightened her, not intensify her blushing.

An unnatural heat flared up her belly as she watched with worry how he swooped down, never severing eye contact, with a predatory smirk full of wickedness.

"_No, no, no, NO!"_

Her sheepish screech resounded unexpectedly high in the dark chamber, but it did not sway him from his purpose. She stared in horrified fascination as he spread her thighs and buried his head between them.

Her hips joggled at his first intrusive lick and she hid her blushing face under her sweaty palms.

She shook her head in denial, but could not stop her back from visibly arch in pleasure.

She had read, out of natural curiosity, promiscuous stories that described it, and even had fantasized a bit in her lonely moments of intimacy, but she would have never imagined that it could feel so perversely good. He was relentless and she just slowly surrendered to the feel, relaxing her arms, closing her eyes, and parting her swollen, reddened lips, gasping for air.

She stared beyond the rays of light, at the black abyss, through her half parted eyelids, and heard how feminine moans echoed loud and wantonly through the room.

She barely cared that it was her voice.

Every time she felt like she would shatter in a bright blinding burst, his tongue would flick away from that aching spot as her body trembled. It was making her crazy.

"_Yes, you hunger for me now, like you should."_

Her mind was too blurred and her body too feverish and compliant, to put any kind of resistance.

He positioned himself, forcing her knees to bend over his back, and her folds were so soaked that his thick hardness dove into her with just one slow deep push.

He hissed, almost like he was in pain, as her soft wet warmness clutched him tightly, but continued to thrust harder into her.

She gasped, gaze clouded, lost in bliss, and wrapped her arms around his shoulders, moving her hips to meet his own. It felt too good, like soaring towards an unreachable verge that she craved to touch.

"_Geh, du dii smoliin!"_

He roared in that dragon language she still did not understand.

For a moment she could see the _dovah_, ramming wildly against his subdued prey, and she came, an explosion of blind white, her narrow walls clamping around him, dragging him over the edge with her. He emitted a low deep growl as his hips sank deeper with a final harsh thrust, then his back shuddered and he collapsed on her, his forehead sweating, his breath uneven.

He had devoured her.

She really should have listened to Lydia.

* * *

**_Dragon language:_**

_**Iiz Slen Nus**__ = Ice Flesh Statue_

_**Feim Zii Gron**__ = Fade Spirit Bind_

_**dovahdin**__ = dragon maiden_

_**Geh du dii smoliin**__ = yes, devour my passion_

* * *

**_Author notes:_**

**_That Miraak, what a manipulative bastard, don't you think? But it is to be expected from someone that has 100 in Speech. 100! Why Bethesda took the time to give him that kind of a stat is quite the question, especially when in Apocrypha there is no one to talk to or to train with, but Hermaeus Mora (shudders). And don't tell me that reading books helps!_**

**_I just can picture it:_**

**_"Let's... have...a... little... chat... my... dear... Champion...*long breath*"_**

**_Worse than Stevie from Malcolm in the Middle._**


	3. Seek

**3.**

**(Yah)**

She punched the empty bed over an over.

She had been seduced.

She seethed in shame at her weakness.

How she hated him.

Damn him to Oblivion, using her own ignorance against her!

Her fingers clawed the mattress as she gritted her teeth in impotent rage.

"_They may suit you well." _

He may have feasted on her body, but he could not force her to speak to him!

She did not dignify him with a response, nor glanced at the cloth and slippers he placed on the bed, near her lain naked figure. She turned her back to him and waited for some kind of retaliation, ready to strike back.

He just kept looking at her silently, his reactions hidden again behind his golden mask, and then walked away.

She immediately recognized the garment with a glance.

It was a dragon priest robe, like the one she had seen Morokei wear before chopping off his disgusting undead head. This one though, was lighter and sleeveless, pristine white and with no armour pieces. She wondered if it was his, and for an instant opposed the idea of putting it on and tear it to shreds just in spite, but sadly there was nothing else to wear.

She discovered too soon as she roamed around, how dull Apocrypha could be.

There was no day or night, nor any other simple way to measure the passing of time.

Its inhabitants had no basic needs like sleep or feed, so there was nothing to eat or drink.

With all that time in her hands she could have at least trained to enter the Bard College, but she found no instruments to play, nor heard anything remotely similar to music, but the soft rustle of pages or the steady bubbling in the black toxic sea. The air carried no smells, but the floating dust of old tomes.

The only feasible activities thus were reading or studying, not a pastime she was particularly fond of. She had always been inclined towards the Way of the Warrior, not of the scholar, as she realized in the Winterhold College.

At first she tried to distract herself with a self-imposed mission, and kept wandering around in the hope to at least avoid Miraak, and at best to find a Black Book that could bring her back to Skyrim.

She understood soon why Miraak did not lock her up, while she sketched in a paper roll all the paths she explored. Though that part of Apocrypha appeared like an unending labyrinth of bookcases, all the passages connected together to form a map of concentric loops.

She also found the platform where Miraak's dragons used to rest and tried in vain to talk with both of them. To her disappointment they were unresponsive but to orders, being under the influence of the Bend Will Shout. She knew that Shout too, but not how to release someone from its effects. She rode Sahrotaar to see if there was a way of escape beyond the labyrinthine walls, but discovered with growing frustration that the whole plane was a constellation of little isles, surrounded by an endless surface of black oily ink, and connected to each other by Black Book chapters, that therefore were not the ones she needed.

She came across so many Eldritch Abominations, but no one seemed able or willing to talk to her. At one point she even tried to engage a lurker in conversation.

The monotony of Apocrypha and the growing hopelessness of her situation were slowly eroding her nerves and Miraak always seemed to know when was the right time to swoop on her.

"_Ah, I see. Still the silent treatment. How mature."_

"_..."_

"_..."_

"_How dare you, after what you've done! Stealing my souls and my-my...!"_

"_Yes? Go on."_

"_You fucking bastard! Disgusting pillager! Shameless snatcher!"_

"_Mm, how typical. Using your feminine wiles to attain from contrition what you clearly lost in battle."_

"_What in oblivion are you insinuating? Like I would ever stoop to that!"_

"_Are you sure? I would not mind, at all."_

"_Don't come closer. S-stop it!"_

"_What? This? Or perhaps you intended this?"_

All those brief exchanges he managed to hook her in were enough to put him in that mood.

She learnt fast enough what would swiftly follow after he removed his mask. There was little she could do when he was set on getting his way and soon she realized, to her chagrin, that her attempts at resistance were slowly becoming more and more half-hearted, because even if she would have rather killed herself than acknowledge it, the pleasure she derived from the sex was slowly becoming an easy way to temporary escape from her desperation.

"_Little dov, I'm quite aware of what you think to achieve."_

"_Oh? What do you mean?"_

"_Just ask me what you wish to know."_

She found out that after he was sated, he was more prone to share some of the knowledge that normally he would not have disclosed, so she thought, why not take some advantage from it?

Subtlety had never been her strong point though, and he did not seem upset in the least.

"_Why do you keep suppressed their wills?"_

That's what she longed to understand for a long while, among other things she was sure he would refuse to explain. Relonikiv and Sahrotaar were the only two intelligent beings beside them in all Apocrypha, and she looked forward to talk to them, like she did with Paarthurnax or Odahviing.

"_Believe me, I'm bestowing on them an act of mercy."_

She could detect a note of melancholy as he murmured sombre next to her.

"_The imprisonment in Apocrypha in the end had crippled their minds. Even if I release them there would be nothing left of their previous selves."_

She remembered then when Paarthurnax told her the story of Numinex, and how dragons that could not fly free in Kynareth's skies sooner or later fell into madness and self-harm.

She did not voice her thoughts though, about how he should have just devoured their souls and put an end to their misery, if he really felt pity for them, however she knew deep inside why he could have not.

Killing them would have forced him to digest the fact that he was really alone.

"_And if he suddenly pops around and catches you? He still considers you his Champion."_

"_Mph, that's highly improbable. His idea of control is leaving one to roam around his books."_

With no forewarning, he suddenly stopped his predictable ambushes.

At first she did not ponder too much on the reason, because after his last 'visit' he revealed to her, not without some residual grudge, that he was researching a new way to repair the stone pillars she so inconveniently destroyed.

How ironic, if she knew she would have ended trapped with Miraak, she would not have helped the Skaal at all.

Thinking about that always made her homesick.

She briefly wondered how much time had already passed in Skyrim.

Few months or a year? Perhaps it was summer. What she would do to taste a sweet, juicy, crunchy apple. Time seemed to last forever in Apocrypha.

She had tried to kill herself once, when for the first time, her hope to flee away started to waver. The thought just came to her unbidden as she walked near a high cliff.

It occurred to her it would be the most painless and fastest way, and let herself fall into the bottomless black sea.

For a moment she gleefully believed she was drowning to her death, only to awake again in her bed.

"_Didn't you think that I had already tried that? There's no escape from this place."_

There was a cold edge in Miraak's voice, that made her for a fleeting instant feel very guilty.

He informed her then, with unsettling detachment, that any kind of harm would just leave her unconscious for a while and if she persisted with such endeavours, to choose a better place to faint, because next time he would not rescue her from remaining stuck forever in that sea.

She started to feel uneasy about his disappearance.

She reasoned it was just her, not used at all to be completely alone for so long. She had never been before in her whole life, there always was someone accompanying her in her journeys, like Lydia, Odahviing, Frea or even those Khajit travellers that got her arrested near the Skyrim borders. To think that she almost died, because some idiots were trying to smuggle skooma.

She smiled with fondness at the memory.

For a moment she thought that she could help Miraak in his search, after all escaping that hell was in her interests too, but then discarded the idea. He would construe it as some show of compliance from her part and that was just unacceptable.

To calm herself, she started reading some titles she thought would be interesting or useful enough, like 'The Doors of Oblivion', and find some clue to escape from there, but soon got too tired of it. So she lied down in her bed and tried to sleep off her nervousness with little success and resorted to lazily pleasure herself, losing her mind into brief moments of mild solace.

She then resumed her strolls, peeking into some other tomes.

In her aggravation she ended carrying around a pile of books to launch them into the black sea, and watch with faint amusement how the water surface just refused to let them sink down.

Until a chilling thought shook her.

What if Hermaeus Mora had indeed caught Miraak plotting again and decided to dispose of him?

Sudden, unbound dread grew at the blink of an eyelash, fed by the threat of remaining forever alone, stranded in that nightmare.

After some nervous pacing, she stood in front of the Black Book that connected to the small location he considered his personal study.

It was just to check that everything was all right, that the bastard was just behaving like every self-absorbed scholar did, then she would excuse herself and swear by all the Divines she just got lost.

And so she opened it.


	4. Fear

**4.**

**(Faas)**

It was quite dark for a study room.

Her worries grew even more instead of being placated, when she saw the messy state his desk was.

All the tomes, tools, notes and Solstheim maps were scattered on the floor, tore and ruined by pools of ink. There were blots of dry ink everywhere, even on the walls.

She almost stumbled on a broken bottle when she located him.

He was sitting on the floor, on the farthest corner, his back leaning on a wall, crouched and holding his head between his hands, and she got closer to him, alarmed by his uncharacteristic behaviour.

She could not read any expression in his face, because of that damnable mask, but there was no need to ask what was happening, his research must have hit a dead end.

It was scary to observe the traces of his fit of rage.

And then it suddenly clicked, why omniscient Hermaeus Mora, Daedric Prince of Fate, let his Champion plot for so long his escape. It must have been the only thread that kept Miraak sane for so long in that hell.

She scolded herself, for the knot of misplaced guilt she suddenly felt in her chest, and then snorted.

It was his own fault for dealing with a Daedra Prince and he should have absorbed her dragon soul when he had the chance to escape, instead of going caveman on her.

The knot intensified though, when she realised a little detail. He still had that chance.

All that time she had been at his mercy and he had not acted upon it, why?

She felt her head spin and had to lean against the nearest column.

Every piece started to fit, as if Julianos himself was inspiring her the answer.

Hermaeus Mora had used her from the beginning.

It suddenly all made more sense, why Miraak had not known of her existence at first and why he had not recognized her. It had been Hermaeus Mora, that set those cultists and that dragon after her, to lure her in Solstheim, to make her actively hunt Miraak and enter Apocrypha. He tangled her up in Miraak's plans, because after thousands of years, his servant had finally found a concrete way to flee from Apocrypha.

So she had been first bait, later a mean to get the Skaal's secrets, and from then on, a twisted way to keep his insurgent Champion in check.

She felt suddenly ill. Miraak was not trying to restore his original plan for his own sake. She was the one stuck there, with no way to escape.

She had promised to herself to not cry anymore and be strong like a Dragonborn should, but broke into sobbing like a kicked puppy, curled against the column. Was that the prize she got for giving up her future, for playing the hero everyone wanted her to be? So after slaying Alduin, Akatosh just tossed her out, like a useless, meaningless tool?

She choked her hiccups and glanced at Miraak.

He did not seem to be bothered by her outburst, but just continued to sit motionless, like he had not heard her intrusion or her wailing.

She approached him and tentatively touched his shoulder.

"_Miraak, look at me. Look at me."_

No reaction and she felt her stomach churn.

She shook her head. He was pigheaded, he had a strong will and had endured all of that for thousand years, so he was certainly not going to crack for less now.

He was not going to lose his mind like those two dragons... but he could still kill her to save himself, he was dangerous.

However he now seemed just a shell of his arrogant self... thus vulnerable. He must have thought very little of her, because his guard was still down, that bastard.

She stared at the sheathed sword at his side.

One swift stab in his neck and she could devour his dragon soul, be free again.

She unsheathed the sword and placed the point of its blade near his exposed neck, but he did not flinch, didn't show any reaction at all. For Azura, he just let her take his sword! For some unfathomable reason, it deeply upset her.

She gritted her teeth and tried to choke that unfitting feeling, it would only be fair payback, for all the grief he had provided to her, for using her to quench his crave.

Her grip trembled.

He had been trying to help her.

No, he would kill her, it was only a matter of time, when he would finally be tired of her.

But he had plenty of chances and did not.

He did not.

Why didn't he?

And if his dragon soul wasn't enough?

She would remain alone.

Completely alone.

The sword rattled on the floor.

"_I am an idiot. An idiot! You too, do you hear me? You are not worthy!"_

She was going mad. This place was making her mad.

She shook him hard against the wall to make him snap out of it and insulted him, in the hopes to get a rise out of him, with no success. Why was he no responding to her? What in Oblivion was wrong with him, didn't he see that he was scaring her to death?

She swallowed and blushed hard.

No.

No way.

Absolutely not.

But if that did not work..!

A brief weird laugh escaped from her.

She would have Shouted at him then, and bent his will into doing what he should have done from the very beginning.

She quickly unfastened his belt, before she lost all of her nerve, but was soon going to chicken out and just run away, like a pathetic, prim maiden, when she felt his body tense. So now he was responding, she thought piqued, how typical. His chin slightly rose so that her open wide eyes found themselves directly looking at the slits of his mask.

She felt like a naughty girl caught red-handed doing something terribly perverted, but she could not back down anymore. Her cheeks flushed as she diverted her gaze to look at his half flaccid member and tentatively caressed it.

For Dibella's love, it could not be so difficult to arouse a man's... thing, right?

She tried to remember some of the descriptions in _'The Lusty Argonian Maid' _for some useful clue.

That's it, she thought with determination as she touched with more audacity, she was going to vigorously 'polish the spear' first. A harsh intake of breath and the growing thickness between her little hands assured her she was following the right path.

Soon prudishness left more place to curiosity, as she explored with inquisitive fingers the hardness that was rapidly swelling at sight.

He continued to stay still though, not daring to make any noise, as if he was afraid to disturb her intent perusing and scare her away, like she was some kind of bashful wild animal, but she noticed from his rigid posture, that all his muscles were tense in expectation.

She traced with a finger the long bulging veins at the sides and mused how weird it was, that it was her first chance to look at them so closely, in spite of their previous intimate encounters.

She tentatively stroked with her thumb the underside of its head and watched how his already turgid shaft kept growing and getting even more red as she stroked a bit faster.

She gripped a bit harder to see if her thumb could at least brush her forefinger,but it twitched and he stifled a soft gasp. She quickly relented her grasp, worried to have hurt him in some way, when she noticed that it got instead thicker, fully erected, and that some drops of colourless fluid came out from the tip of its head. Emboldened by his rash intakes of breath, she moved her lips close enough to flick the drop with her tongue.

A musky smell pervaded her nostrils and she unconsciously licked her lips. To her surprise it had a salty flavour and not the bitter taste she had always thought. So she resumed to savour him again, sometimes with quick fast licks with the tip of her tongue, then she would travel his whole length, from base to tip, with slow, wet laps, gaining hissing, suffering groans she had never heard him release before then.

That whimpering desperation lurking under those guttural grunts, she wanted it to hear it again, to come fort and fill the whole room with undeniable, overwhelming intensity,to rumble from the deepest recesses of his throat, so she parted her moistened lips and with torturing slowness enclosed his girth inside her warm, welcoming mouth, caressing the buried pulsing length with her teasing, slippery hot tongue, while her petite, inexperienced hands fondled its base with clumsy, but steadfast strokes.

His gloved fingers picked up a strand of long red locks that had fallen to the front, obscuring his view, and gently pulled them behind her ear, so that he could intently watch again how her plump lips smoothly slipped up and down his shaft. He moaned huskily at the licentious sight before him and rested a hand on her head, burying his fingers in her fiery messy mane.

She could feel how hot and throbbing his hardness had truly become, when she wrapped her tongue around a part of its swollen girth that pulsated with restrained force.

His hips buckled harshly, sliding his cock even deeper inside her mouth, his hand gripping tightly her hair and she almost chocked at being suddenly so full. Each spurt filled her with the unknown, new taste of his come, that she could only swallow down, and it briefly reminded her of salt and white caps, and the slight bitter sweet aftertaste of taproot.

He hoarsely groaned as he thrust with one final jerk, burying her head in his loins, as he reached the last of his release between her soft lips.

She slowly raised again her head, puffed cheeks red from the exertion, while he slackened back against the wall, his breathing still laboured.

With no warning she pulled away his mask, she needed to see the expression he was wearing and felt a sudden, intense rush of power in seeing how his eyes were tightly shut and the lingering tension that remained in his brows, at how an unusual visible redness diffused from his perspiring cheekbones, and how irregular his breath escaped from his slightly parted lips.

At how much she had made him undone.

His gloved hand rested on her nape and pulled her towards him.

"_You will be the end of me."_

Just a rough whisper, before his mouth greedily assaulted her own and his invading tongue devoured their first kiss, her first Dibellian kiss.

Trapped again between the floor and his heavy frame, she wondered if he could taste his lingering presence in her mouth.

* * *

**Author's notes:**

**This was a difficult chapter to write, because both DB and Miraak crack, but for different reasons, and thus giving a sharp twist to their interactions. Of course my main problem here was to keep a despondent Miraak IC and let transpire clues about his possible reasons through DB's PoV, and we know by now she's a great warrior, but not the sharpest tool in the arsenal.**

**It's Author's Head!Canon that a Mara kiss is a sweet peck on the lips, a Dibella kiss is the French kiss, and a Sanguine kiss is a cheeky metaphor for oral, so if Sanguine comes to you and tells "Why don't you give me a kiss?" beware, he is not being romantic at all!**


	5. Push

**5.**

**(Dah)**

No matter how much she pried, Miraak refused to reveal what exactly had been the cause of his breakdown or what would be his new course of action. He just behaved like it had never happened or, to be more precise, preferred to retain only a selection of facts convenient only to him, while he continued perusing old dusty tomes in his workspace. There had been however a subtle change of dynamics between them that he seemed to overlook, but she could not forget or ignore.

As she had feared though, he became too complacent and more full of himself than usual. When she asked him, out of nagging curiosity, to translate for her what was carved in the Dragon Wall of _'Div'_, he even offered, not without a heavy coat of conceit, to teach her how to speak _Dovahzul_.

She had nothing to do, no excuse to refuse, and it was clear the overbearing git wouldn't accept a no for an answer.

So he would sit next to her, his mask lightly bent over her shoulder and an arm subtly resting around her waist, while he explained to her the grammar structure or the meaning of some words she managed to decipher from some simple excerpts in _'Dragon Language: Myth no More'_.

Usually the content of the lessons was quite entertaining, albeit sometimes he got so patronizing and insufferably arrogant when he corrected her mistakes, that she just felt an irrepressible urge to punch him, put him in his place and make him suffer in agony at her mercy.

And then she would remember how quiet and wonderfully compliant he had been that unforgettable time he had really been under her whims, and the sweet rush of power she had felt from it, just to miss his next question and get further reprimanded for not paying enough attention.

When she flipped out for the first time, she completely caught him by surprise.

With no warning, during one of his tirades, she snapped shut the book, stood up, ripped open his robes, unbuckled his belt and untied his trousers. His outraged outcry died in his throat and he finally shut up as she settled between his lap and assaulted him with her mouth.

The first times he would just remain seated and let her do what she pleased, playing along quietly as long as she was on her knees and he could lazily watch how her full reddened lips slid tightly around him, but soon she found herself unable to stop from pushing his self-control, each time postponing his release longer and longer with teasing sloppy licks, just to see how much he could resist before he lashed back and hurled her at the nearest desk, bending her against it.

"_Tell me dovahdin, who is your nunon dovah, your only jun."_

"_Say it!"_

"_Ah! Nunon... nunon hi..."_

"_Yes, hi los pah ungol, mine to savour as I please, fod Zu'u praag!"_

Sometimes, in the middle of that pleasurable haze, while he relentlessly pounded into her, she had a brief moment of lucidity and wondered what in Oblivion was wrong with her for doing that, and why she got every time so dripping wet by all of it. She had a gnawing suspicion that he kept exasperating her on purpose, just to get her willingly kneeling between his legs.

She could just picture that perverted drunkard of Sam Guevenne, toasting in 'The Bannered Mare' with some spiced wine and congratulating her for 'living her first raunchy affair with style, gal!'. If that wasn't convoluted enough though, it took them only a further little push to fall into their old habit of provoking each other.

"_I'm fed up of doing nothing. I'm going to train, old man."_

"_Really. Is that some kind of threat?"_

"_Just giving you a fair warning, because I'm such a good sport. So don't come sulking when I will finally wipe the floor with your ass."_

"_Please, don't make me laugh."_

"_You know very well that without that Shout I would have totally owned you!"_

"_Sure. I suppose I will have to tutor you then. You know, to give you a fair chance."_

"_Arrogant jerk! I certainly don't need your help!"_

"_Really? I will be the judge of that."_

However their first sparring after their match at the Summit had been quite anti-climatic.

He was clearly not taking her training seriously and was having fun at her expenses, throwing cocky quips about her posture, her techniques, the power of her shouts and generally grating on her nerves being an obnoxious know-it-all. Bickering thus became a common occurrence in their training sessions.

"_So, tell me, when are you going to 'wipe the floor with my ass'? I am waiting."_

"_You, cheater! We were supposed to use only the Shouts I knew!"_

"_And lose my chance to be again on top?"_

"_You men are all pigs!"_

"_Well, technically my dear, I'm all dovah."_

All of a sudden, that last comment made her realize she knew very few about men, even less about dragons, and little to nothing about Miraak.

She was trapped in the biggest archive of past, present and future knowledge, why hadn't she thought before to make some research on the matter, especially now that she could read basic dragon language? 'Know your enemy' was an overused motto that could not have fit better in her case, especially if she wanted to bring that arrogant ass down a peg or two during their next sparring.

And so, while she searched through the shelves and found _'__There Be Dragons'_, she had to admit she had cared very little to understand the way of the _dovah, _despite Paarthurnax's attempts.

Forher they were just big preys, slumbering alone at the peak of some isolated mountain she had to pin in a map, hunt down, fight and devour, and then rinse and repeat, like a kind of odd, full-time job. A very lucrative occupation though, not only because of the valuable dragon bones, but one could always find old chests full of riches, that they protected to the death.

That was one quirk she had never understood about dragons, why timeless creatures would get so attached about treasures they could easily live without. They were so possessive she had no worries they would fly away when they were close to death, it was enough to threaten to take away their precious chest and they would land on the ground, ready to get slaughtered.

Some of them instead were hot-blooded enough to actively look for her and then soar around out of reach, roaring over her head in challenge, and then flying off as a final taunt, though in the end none managed to evade for too long her Dragonrend.

That kind of behaviour was unexpectedly foolish for such highly intelligent and manipulative creatures, and it just made no sense, especially after she had defeated Alduin.

She had asked some explanation to Odahviing once, but he just gave her some half-baked answer, before strolling away to fire at some mudcrabs. Yes, she thought rolling her eyes, another of their inconsistencies was their ability to be as much as obsessive as they could be inattentive, so easily distracted by silly things!

She then grabbed _'__The Dragon War'_ and through a fast superficial reading she discovered it had happened during the 'merethic era'... The term per se told her nothing, but it was a trail to follow nonetheless, and thanks to that she decided to skim _'The Ages of Man'_. It was useless information, but for the last past, that let hercompletely baffled.

If that book report was accurate and she made her calculations right, Miraak was a six thousand years old Atmoran. Six thousands. She had always supposed thejerk had been rotting there for at least some centuries, but to be trapped in Apocrypha for six millennia? Six bloody millennia.

"_Enough. You clearly are not paying attention. If we continue you will end getting hurt."_

If he had said that during their previous sparring, she would have retorted incensed with a stinging comeback, but her lack of commitment was so blatant that there was no way she could prove him wrong, and that just embittered her more.

She had been distracted the whole fight, only one sour thought drumming incessantly in her head, while she kept half-heartedly parrying and dodging his sword.

How could had she been so stupid in believing that she, a nineteen year old girl, that learnt about her true heritage just few years ago, could have won against someone that had been Dragonborn for at least six thousand years? Divines, just the thought was laughable.

She had been training with the Greybeards for barely a year, while Miraak had for millennia the whole knowledge of Apocrypha at one snap of his fingers.

Perhaps it was because her life had been like the passing of a shooting star, she thought morosely. At fourteen she escaped from the Bruma orphanage, at fifteen she defeated Mirmulnir, at seventeen she became Alduin's Bane, and after her purpose had been gloriously completed, she attended apprentice courses for half a year at the Mages College, to see what was all the great fuss about magic. She had embraced and fulfilled her prophecy with the impetus of a Dwarven Centurion just to sit forgotten in the library with that grumpy orc of Urag-gro Shub, and decipher pedantic tomes for after-class assignments.

And then Miraak appeared, with all the allure of a new heroic quest tailored just for her. Pity that in her rash overconfidence she had forgotten a tiny, little detail, that there was no Dragonrend counterpart for Alduin's substitute.

No matter if she was nineteen or eighty or even a few centuries old, Miraak would just humour her while she kept making a fool of herself, and she would never catch up to him, not certainly in a brief span of time.

"_You are not your usual self. What is wrong?"_

His question rang sudden, succinct and sharply direct, after the end of their _Dovahzul _lesson.

"_Nothing."_

"_Don't lie to me."_

"_I will train alone from now on."_

"_Why?"_

That cold edge she was not used to hear, prying by force thoughts she did not want to share, that was what made her spit it out, screaming at his face.

"_I don't want to spar with you anymore, so stop bothering me!" _

Her surge of anger sounded so childish even to her ears, that she just wanted to run away and hide somewhere to lick the wounds of her tattered self-esteem, but he stopped her, pulling her wrist so tightly, that it almost hurt.

"_Tell me the reason. Now."_

She kept her mouth tightly shut, stubbornly refusing to look at him, but a traitorous blink let some tears of frustration silently escape from her glossy eyes.

It seemed to somehow mollify him, because he relented his grip, pulled away his mask and raised her chin, forcing her to make eye contact. Under his raw scrutiny she felt so pressured, that her lips trembled, on the verge to pour out all her bottled up conflicting emotions in undignified sobs.

She had always had non-judgemental, caring Lydia to confide in, but there no one existed but him to vent to, to talk to. He, who constantly kept rising the bar.

"_It is useless. Useless! You will never take me seriously!"_

She bawled, giving up any tentative to keep up a strong façade, because what was the use?

However, instead of ridiculing her for her outburst like she was expecting, he unexpectedly sighed, his shoulders visibly sagging and then chuckled.

"_Foolish girl, is it just that? Hurt pride?"_

"_As expected, you understand nothing!"_

She screeched like a Hagraven, but he remained unperturbed, recognizing her aggressiveness for what it was, a tentative to regain some trace of her former composure.

"_Stop this nonsense. You know you could have been mighty, if fate had decreed otherwise."_

"_I don't need your pity, so leave me be!"_

"_I cannot. Did I not promise to teach you what even the Greybeards do not know?"_

"_Eh? Did you? And when?"_

He sighed again, making her feel like some petulant brat, and that made her bristle more.

"_You never pay to me enough attention. We will have to change that."_

"_What do you mean?"_

He did not answer, but pulled her to sit on the bench, over his lap.

"_And stop coddling me like a damn child!"_

She tried to wiggle out of his arms, but his embrace was too tight.

"_Don't be obtuse. I have clearly never done that, and I am surely not planning to start."_

He whispered suggestively in deaf ears, she was too busy hissing back her recriminations.

"_Liar! You purposefully restrained yourself at the Summit, from the very beginning!"_

"_So, of all the things, you chose to ruminate on that."_

"_Ah! So you don't deny it!"_

"_You indeed never pay enough attention."_

And he dared to sigh again. She was going to say something spiteful just to antagonize him, when he did a most peculiar action, that induced her to stop. He caressed her cheek with an intimate tenderness that she would have never expected coming from him.

"_Nonetheless I've always found fascinating that competitive strike of yours."_

The sultriness sneaking from that breezy comment completely deflated her temper, leaving her speechless, because it almost sounded... affectionate? As if reading her perplexed thoughts he raised her chin to kiss her, but she backed a bit flustered.

"_Really, still shying away? I thought we were far beyond that, by now."_

He chuckled as he kissed her neck and his hands caressed her thighs under her gown. How annoyingly perceptive of him. Perhaps they had been for some time on the same page, but now...

"_Just relax yourself, as usual."_

… how could she explain that even if he appeared to be a healthy Nord in his late forties, she couldn't stop thinking about the heaps of centuries that separated him from her ridiculous, almost non-existent, amount of experience? Or that now that she was aware, she felt awkwardly inadequate, immature and childish? She didn't like to feel so out of control and thus, with the finesse of a giant, she blurted out part of her thoughts.

"_Don't you feel too old to deal with someone like me?"_

His soft expression froze, like she had just poured on him a bucket of cold water.

With no warning he stood up, dropping her on the floor like a sack of potatoes.

"_I see."_

Those were the only two words he hissed before walking away. She did not try to stop him to ask why in Nirn he had to react so violently to such an innocent question. From his vitriolic tone, she knew he was not just offended, he was livid, and so it was wiser to leave him to cool off first.

As usual, all that kept happening between them continued to make little sense.

* * *

**Dragon language:**

**_Div_**** = wyrm**

**_Dovahzul _****=dragon language**

**_nunon dovah_**** = only dragon**

**_jun_**** = man**

**_nunon hi_**** = only you**

_**hi los pah ungol **_**= you are all mine**

_**fod Zu'u praag**_**= when I need**


	6. Inspire

**6.**

**(Shaan)**

While Miraak sulked who knew where, she kept herself occupied, looking for more Atmorian history, because surely a High Priest of Solstheim had been important enough to get his actions reported somewhere.

Long piles scattered around her bent form and titles like _'Night of Tears'_, and _'Pocket Guide to the Empire, Third Edition: Atmora'_,were visible at the top. She resorted to read even the boring collections of _'History of Raven Rock'_, but no matter where she browsed she couldn't find any account, not even a little mention about Miraak's background.

It was quite upsetting, but just when she was ready to give up and throw a kick to all the piles in frustration, she leafed through _'The Guardian and the Traitor'._

It turned out to be quite disappointing in the end, because it just retold with fancy words what Frea had said to her long ago, giving no further detailed information, not even mentioning his name.

She was going to just close it and be done with it, when her eyes fell on a familiar long shadow. Miraak stood few feet behind her back. He was no stupid and he must had already deduced what she was up to with just a glance to the titles.

He picked a book from the floor and held it with contempt.

"_Research? Are you so foolish to willingly throw yourself in the obsessive lures of Apocrypha?_

_Meddling girl! I told you to come to me for anything you wished to know!"_

And then he walked away, before she could even formulate a decent comeback, taken aback by how his hissing voice carried more than an open scolding, there was also a heavy dose of bad concealed resentment. He couldn't still be upset about that remark, right? She remained sitting on the floor, looking at his far retreating form, just rolling her eyes at his touchiness. Some time later though, she found herself huffing, arms crossed and tapping her foot in mounting annoyance.

How was she supposed to ask him anything, if he was nowhere to be found?

And as the time passed her suspicion became a certainty. At first it sounded ludicrous, but the more she looked around for him, the more she believed that the git was purposely avoiding her.

She stepped in his personal chamber too, when she found that it was conveniently unlocked.

As expected from him, the dark room was neat and minimal, save for some scattered books on the desk. So it seemed he had been there. It was not in his character to leave things in disorder, so she approached his desk with a good amount of curiosity.

She knew he was obsessed with his Dragonborn heritage, but all of those books were only about the Last Dragonborn. How weird, there were also some that she had not read yet. It was a bit unsettling, to be completely honest. To her utter surprise she even found tomes that would have been published in the far future, and recounted, some in poetic verses, and others with historical details, _'The epic deeds of the legendary Dragon Maiden'_, _'Alduin's Defeat'_, and _'Truths and Myths__of Akatosh's Daughter'_.

She grimaced at the titles, how pompous they sounded to her ears. Dragon maiden, really? What was that bard drinking? _Dovahdin. _She suddenly remembered when he would sometimes call her that and blushed a bit. So Miraak had clearly researched about her, but why?

Unlike her he had it easy, she thought scornfully, there were so many titles and references, that it was totally unfair. To think he had the gall to question her own research! So he already knew everything about her past and she had nothing about him, not even a little clue, but that useless book that talked about Vahlok and depicted him like a total evil jerk. She briefly snickered, but then became thoughtful at the idea that it was a bit sad, how nobody knew about the First Dragonborn. However, it had to be expected if one defied the ruling of their time. Weren't the Talmor for example, actively censoring and changing anything written that had to do with Talos? Perhaps that was what the dragons had done too, after Vahlok had defeated him. Nonetheless, Apocrypha was supposed to contain any kind of information, censured or not.

And then she remembered what he had said to her once.

"_They wanted to use me to deal with Alduin, Hakon and the rest. I chose otherwise."_

He had been strong enough to beat Alduin, and even had an army of rebels to back him in the war! So why hadn't he done that? It would have saved her a lot of trouble and she could have lead a simple, normal life, becoming an apprentice blacksmith under Eorlund Gray-Mane, just like she had planned in Bruma, completely unaware of the existence of that damn place called Apocrypha!

She sat on his bed, fuming about something that could not be changed.

If she had been him, she would have...

She let that thought dangle unfinished, when another one suddenly danced in her head.

Perhaps that's why he seemed so interested in her past.

She was what he could have been, if he chose the other path. All those books could have been then talking about him and his deeds, instead of hers. He would have been remembered as the hero that slain Alduin and freed humanity from his tyranny, instead of being completely forgotten.

How ironic that he then defeated Alduin's Bane.

That battle at the Summit of Apocrypha had been his first real victory after thousand years of imprisonment. A victory that nobody would know either, but her.

In the end, the only one that had recognized him as a worthy rival from the beginning had been her, because from her skewed point of view he had been The First, while she was just the last newcomer.

And she wouldn't have noticed him, but gone her merry way, if not for Hermaeus Mora's machinations, who then left her to him as a cruel mockery of a prize.

Perhaps that was the reason he couldn't kill her.

* * *

**Ah, reviews always make me so happy, can you see me grinning like a fool? Leaving me reviews is like giving cookies to the Cookie Monster! To ****Beawr, followedthewaves and Violenceisalwaystheanswer, thank you for the cookies and to reassure me I'm doing things right (winks)! To Guest, ouch, so there are still parts with some errors... Please, close an eye for now, English is not my first language and I have no beta... To Meredith, yeah, I know! (laughs) Do you believe that she had to be thirty and a thief? But then I had to retcon because of Vex and Tonilia, no way that she could mingle with them and be so stupid clueless in the first chapter. So all references to the Thief Guild went to the bin (ah, the heartache) with her years, cunning and common sense. By the way, I have that playlist too, helps to keep IC a lot.  
**


	7. Balance

**7.**

**(Ro)**

"_What are you doing here?"_

She could see from the brief hesitation in his straight posture, that Miraak was taken aback at seeing her sprawled on his bed, reading one of his books.

The wait had been long, but it was the only way to corner him.

She sat on the edge of the bed and shut _'The Dragon Huntress'_. At the sight of the title his gloved hands curled into fists.

"_How do you dare to snoop around my personal belongings!"_

He was seething with the knowledge that she had rummaged through his drawers.

She could have answered that it was his own fault for not properly locking his door, and have vanished for so much time with no notice, but she would not let him lead her astray from the topic she wanted to discuss, so she asked straight away, without preambles.

"_Why haven't you escaped yet?"_

Miraak stood there, his reaction conveniently hidden by his mask.

For a moment she thought he was really pondering on the best way to explain himself to her, until he towered on her sitting form and, with one strong grip in her arm, hauled her to the room entrance.

"_Go out. GO OUT."_

Miraak never screamed. He had never lost his composure before.

Looking at how ruffled up he became, she had her final proof.

"_FUS RO DAH!"_

He did not expect it, her attacking first, in his own lair. His chest took the whole force of her shout and he was hurled on the bed. She didn't lose any time and straddled him, hissing her warning.

"_No, ni daar tiid. This time it is by my own terms, dii siifur mu'ul." _

She ripped off his mask and his robe and grabbed with both hands his head to lock his mouth in a fierce, long kiss, before he could Shout anything at her.

She clawed his hairy, muscled torso, while intently staring at his widened eyes as he gasped for air.

She could see the internal battle behind his shocked gaze, the need to take control against the desire to see what she would do to him next.

He didn't seem to understand yet.

"_Zu'u mahn, I ride the dovah! Gol Hah Dov!"_

The effect of the Shout was instantaneous, she could see it by the way his tenses muscles and his contracted jaw relaxed, and how his outrage glittered in his black eyes with promises of merciless retribution.

As she untied his belt and trousers she wondered how much the effect would last. Those words of power were relatively new to her and she was not sure if her Thu'um was strong enough to keep at bay his will for too long.

That made her undress faster and unfasten his loincloth.

She smirked at the sight and threw a glance at the clash of emotions raging in his eyes.

He was hard stiff and she felt herself get even more soaked at the confirmation that she got it right, that she was finally understanding the conflicting urges of that twisted man.

She delicately squeezed his throbbing member and leaned down to tease it with her tongue, observing with devilish pleasure how tightly he shut his eyes. She had learnt enough tricks and already knew which spots to lick to intensify his powerless suffering. Oh yes, he taught her well indeed.

"_Now I finally got why you can't hurt me."_

She told him with a sultry voice he had never heard before, just as her warm folds slowly descended and wrapped his swollen hardness, until she was completely riding him.

"_All was mine from the beginning, right? Kopraan, zahreik, hadrim."_

She sighed lustfully, looking from half-closed lids down at him, at how he was at her mercy, while slowly rocking against him, letting him watch helplessly how she completely unravelled.

The rosy tint of her cheeks matching her wild hair, the satisfied smile she tried to temper nibbling her bottom lip, the way her luscious soft breasts wobbled at each little motion, and how her tight walls squeezed his cock, it was driving him mad.

However it was not enough, and she started to caress his chest, smothering his neck and torso with a trail of scorching kisses, while he could do nothing.

"_Infatuated and forlorn dovah, do not fret though, zu'u laan hi rem."_

It was like those words pushed him enough to finally snap from her control, and she found herself suddenly pressed on her back, her wrists pinned over her head, her mouth invaded by his own, and their roles abruptly reversed. A shudder ran through her spine when he next whispered with a deep growl.

"_That's the risk of riding a volg dovah my dear, in the end he will buck you off. Gol Hah!"_

He didn't use the whole Shout, he wanted to give her a chance to get free. Such a twisted man.

She would show him soon though, how much she wanted to fight him, rival him in any way, if only she could gather enough concentration to break from the Shout, and he was not making it any easier, not if he kept fondling her breasts and biting the curve of her neck, or sliding inside her with slow hard thrusts, reaching that spot he knew made her shiver in need.

From the challenging smirk he wore he was keeping that low, torturing pace on purpose.

That insufferable conceited jerk, he was clearly enjoying her feeble whimpers and weak attempts at getting free. Payback or a contorted way to give her more time? She moaned as he nibbled her earlobe. Perhaps both, there would be no satisfaction in his victories if she were meek and subdued.

She would never bend to his will, he knew that, but he was also aware that she loved challenges.

She rose again, finally breaking free, and wrapped her arms around his shoulders, pushing him in a sitting position, with her legs tightly hooked around his waist.

She buried her face in the crook of his neck, moaning in his ear as they rocked with abandon against each other, until she arched back, a scream escaping her lips. With her walls tightening around him, he could not delay anymore and followed her with a low groan, letting her warm vice squeeze him until he was completely depleted.

He slipped out and laid next to her. With their hands intertwined and tired smiles, they sealed their silent deal.

* * *

**Dragon language:**

_**ni daar tiid**_**= not this time**

_**dii siifur mu'ul**_**= my own rule**

_**Zu'u mahn**_**= I decide**

_**Gol Hah Dov **_**= Earth Mind Dragon**

_**Kopraan, zahreik, hadrim **_**= Body, heart, mind**

_**zu'u laan hi rem**_**= I want ****you too**

_**volg**_**= untamed**

* * *

**How much the DB got it right is up to you, Miraak could have been an obsessive stalker from the beginning, or a manipulative bastard that wanted to have his fun, but fell in his own trap and developed Lima Syndrome. As this is mainly from DB's point of view there are no certainties _if and when_ Miraak is being truthful or manipulative, you decide that too. This is one of the reasons he dislikes DB's researching her own answers, he prefers to be her only source of info. From DB's side, she has many flaws, but she is an exceptional fast learner, subconsciously she understands the only way she can manipulate him is using her sexuality, and she adapts accordingly.**

**I hope all of this is in some way perceivable from the story, there is always this risk of being too subtle or be 'anvilicious' and ruin everything.**

**From now on the last few chapters will seem to sail to lighter moods, but as I said from the beginning there will be no happy ending, nor a dramatic tearjerker one, because that's how life in Skyrim is, an uncertain grey future full of problems.**

**Don't forget to leave a cookie or share some thoughts, I'm curious like that.**


	8. Allegiance

**8.**

**(Mir)**

They were sprawled again in their bed.

"_Cuddle me, will you?"_

She was becoming more overbearing and clingy, but he indulged her nonetheless, playing well his part, as always. Familiar arms wrapped her waist, pushing her back against his chest. She entwined his hands between hers, and started to fiddle with his fingers. She was in a melancholic mood.

"_Tell me again about fate... and us."_

Her request was vague, but there was no need to specify what she needed to hear, and so he humoured her like usual, burying his nose in her hair and whispering near her ear, with a deep soothing voice, promises of freedom, about his search of a new way to escape from Apocrypha, and how he would take care of everything. Other times however, when he was in a disheartened mood too, he would quietly chide her for not plunging his sword in his neck and escape, when he had given her ample chance long ago. The huskiness in his voice betrayed him though, revealing how much he was still tortuously revelling in her choice.

Much later, as he slowly opened up, she could truly wander in the depths of Miraak's obsession over fate and their shared heritage.

"_There is no space for happenstance in Akatosh's designs."_

He kept reminding her, almost like a mantra.

"_I saw a refuge from Akatosh's puppetry, in Hermaeus Mora's disguised cage."_

He confided to her once, while they lazily strolled through an aisle.

"_How foolish, don't you agree? To exchange one Master for another. Or so I believed, until I saw you."_

"_How is that relevant? I don't understand."_

"_Of course you do not, you have never fully pondered on the implications of our common legacy."_

"_How lucky then that I have you now, to enlighten me with your profound wisdom."_

"_..."_

"_It was sarcasm or a kick in the shin."_

"_I see, this topic bores you. My apologies, I did not notice."_

"_For Azura, don't go touchy on me now…"_

"_..."_

"_All right. We are a bit touchy and that was uncalled for."_

"_We?"_

"_I. Now go on and stop smirking."_

"_One Master is linear and set in his ways, while the other is unvarying, yet fickle."_

"_In Common, please? And don't dare to sigh!"_

"_Well... Tell me then, Last Dragonborn, of a time you acted by your own volition."_

Her first thought was to just comment how stupid that question was, but she just remained there, gaping at him while she tried to fish for a witty answer.

Her memories skimmed fast all of her past, until an old, grey building took shape in her mind, and then overlapped with a blurred vision of Bruma outer walls, slowly fading away from her limited view inside the Khajit caravan.

And so they started discussing about the range of individual free will in a predetermined path, like a divine prophecy. She could see now what he was implying, but she could not shake the sensation that he was turning her attention to other facets of the topic on purpose, that there was an important part that she was still missing.

"_I was sure that Akatosh had forsaken me, you know."_

He said then out of the blue, breaking their silence and her lethargy. They got in that strange habit of sitting on the edge of the platform after a sparring session, and stare at the uninspiring expanse of black, bubbling ink. She did not comment on the absurdity of that statement and waited, to see if he would add something else. He did not disappoint, he seemed to be in a brooding mood.

"_It would have been easier, though."_

She rolled her eyes, pity that following his jumps between unconnected thoughts was like solving a Dwemer puzzle with a pair of pincers. A headache.

"_Easier what? To be forsaken?"_

"_If you were a man."_

"_Oh, I see. How sexist!"_

"_I would have killed you, no doubts."_

"_It was not so bad! I could do better if I had decent armour for a chance, and you know it!"_

"_At the Summit, you fool."_

Now the subject was unmistakable, and she kept quiet.

'At the Summit', words that together indicated an event almost taboo to cite between them. They had not still put a foot in that place yet, at least together. It was like it had never existed.

That heavy, unnatural silence between them was becoming unnerving and so she shared the first thought that crossed her mind.

"_If I remember well, it is larger than Sahrotaar's platform."_

She had to use 'it', she still couldn't say the proper name without some discomfort.

"_We could train there, sometimes."_

He stood up and did not answer, it was clear he did not like the idea.

"_Why not?"_

"_Stop asking stupid questions."_

She couldn't brush off the sting she suddenly felt from being at the receiving end of such unexpected churlishness. Usually that was her prerogative, and he was the one to handle it with impeccable style, unlike her, who proceeded to poke him further.

"_What? Don't tell me that staying in that place makes you uneasy."_

"_If I remember correctly, I am not the one that lost there."_

"_Yeah, sure, that's why you are still here, so worried about my sensitivity. So if I'm okay with it, no problem, right?"_

She must have said something right despite her boldness, because he abruptly grabbed her wrist and marched to another aisle, the one she knew was directly connected to Sahrotaar's abode. He did not utter a single word for the whole ride, not even to complain about how she kept squeezing her arms around his waist on purpose, to get some reaction. She was starting to suspect that for some unknown reason he was aggravated, but was trying to repress it.

"_Are you satisfied, now?"_

He just commented with a flat tone, when Sahrotaar landed. It was strange to be there again, in the very place were everything ended and started at the same time. It suddenly felt like she had leaped back in time, but inside a different perspective.

"_I forgot how wide it was, it is. Did we really run back and forth all this distance?"_

She frowned and waited, no answer, it was like chatting with the floor, or worse, Relonikiv. So, when she almost reached the centre, she turned back to ask what the hell was wrong with him, only to notice that he was nowhere near, but was still standing next to Sahrotaar, watching her with crossed arms from afar.

"_Well, what are you waiting for?"_

"_Indeed. Come, we're leaving."_

"_Now? And why?"_

"_For once, just hush and do as I say!"_

She would have gotten extremely offended and would have started to yell, if it wasn't for the weariness transpiring from his voice. Perhaps she had been right in her teasing, that place made him uneasy too, and he brought her there just to prove her wrong. That proud idiot. She ran back to him and grabbed his arm to pull him towards the centre, she would certainly not make it easier for him, if that was the case.

"_No, this is the perfect chance to keep your promise."_

"_What are you talking about?"_

"_You have to teach me Telekinesis, so that I can take books from the higher shelves."_

"_Stop fooling around, I never promised you that." _

"_How can you be so sure?"_

"_You do not master the required skills."_

"_You call casting Magelight a skill?"_

"_Do not be difficult. Come."_

She was too soft for her own good.

"_Idiot, don't you get it? The only way to forget a bad experience, is to replace it with something better! So come on."_

"_As if it could be so easy. Such a plain mentality. However, knowing your simple-minded ways, I can't certainly expect more."_

She clenched her fists and lowered her chin, glaring at a spot on the floor.

She would have never imagined that his cold shoulder, the sharp steel of his tone, or the venom imbued in his deliberate insult, could hurt her so much. So it was happening.

"_I know what your problem is, bastard."_

She murmured with barely contained rage. Her arms were trembling.

"_You are regretting your choice!"_

The silence was deafening, after her yell.

"_Choice? Stupid, ignorant girl. I did not have a choice."_

He hissed incensed, his voice rising after each word.

"_I only fooled myself in believing that."_

"_Liar, LIAR! Don't spew that bullshit fate excuse to me, you here made a fucking choice!"_

He moved with remarkable speed and held her forearms in a tight grip before she could back away.

"_How handily tenuous are your memories!"_

He was shouting too now.

"_When you destroyed the pillars. When you made a deal with Hermaeus Mora. Then you robbed me of my last semblance of choice! You do not see it yet, do you? How convenient of you to be my opposite and appear in my path, just when I was going to return to Nirn!"_

She would have slapped him with all the strength in her arm, if she had one of them free from his grasp. How dared he, to unload his responsibilities on her.

"_What I see, is a man that didn't have the balls to carry his burdens! Those coming from the very power he keeps strutting around! Not even the outcomes of his wimpy decisions! And then, he has the gall to dump on others his own faults!" _

"_Enough! Do not provoke me."_

His voice was trembling from the rage, but she was too furious to care anymore.

"_Or what? Will you kill me and finally make the fucking choice that makes you happy?"_

He shook her shoulders, shouting at the top of his lungs, and strands of hair covered her vision.

"_VIK HI! You, idiotic girl, dur hin sahkren! Not an ounce of self-preservation, hren punah! Do not presume to preach me, when you do exactly what you accuse me of!"_

His chest visibly lifted up and down out of breath, and heavy pants could be heard, amplified by the mask.

"_Tell me, whose fault is that you are trapped here! Akatosh's? Hermaeus Mora's?"_

He added hoarsely, with a trace of composure, but not less fury.

"_Mine?"_

She wished with all her heart to scream yes, it was, but she knew what his rebuttal would be. He had not forced her to go back to Solstheim and delve again in Apocrypha, nor make a deal with a Daedra. And she could not deny it.

The more time passed, the more he seemed to regain his former aplomb. He released her arms from his hold. His tone was again smooth like ice.

"_We shouldn't have come here. It was foolish."_

"_No, you finally spat out what you were really thinking."_

From his rigid posture she could see how that statement completely struck him.

"_How... manipulative of you."_

"_I did not win Alduin with my pretty face."_

It was intended to be a simple barb, but she caught too late, how that phrase could be misinterpreted in another way. He tipped her chin up and slowly passed a thumb over her lips. The coldness of the leather chilled her.

"_These little lips of yours, are indeed your most effective weapon."_

She couldn't help but blush, that was intentionally worded to convey another different meaning.

"_You know, I had planned at first to seduce you with the offer of more power." _

He pulled with deliberate slowness the sash of her dress.

"_But I soon noticed you were too idealist to accept that."_

She understood now what was happening.

"_Given also your age, I concluded that appealing to your callow notion of romanticism would have been more effective."_

Miraak did nothing without purpose, there were always multiple motives behind his actions, even the simplest. For example, why he had chosen to give her that white dress long ago, among those few he had. It didn't hide her curves and it was the easiest to disrobe.

"_I would have told you we were fated by the gods to be together."_

There was a reason he brought her there. She had been pushing him around for too long, with too much _Fus_.

"_And then I would have promised you the moons and stars, to get your legs wide spread."_

She felt the soft fabric of the dress fall over her feet.

"_Ah, if only it could be so."_

It did not bother her to be completely naked while he was fully clothed.

She was so attuned to his moods now, that there was not need to study the subtle shifts in the expression he safely hid behind the mask.

His gloved hands lazily caressed the side of her breast and the curve of her hip. The leather and the metal around his wrists felt hard and cold, and a shiver ran through her spine.

"_So easily mislead from waiting my return, like you should have done."_

He was doing that to level the field. He wanted to return to that semblance of predominance he once had. It did not bother her though, not when she was aware of the power she held over him. She would indulge his need of being in charge, if that would restore _Ro, _that balance she had inadvertently unsettled.

He pushed her on the cool floor, and his frame loomed over her, covering her vision and her pale skin with the rough fabric of his robes. Smooth, chilling leather slid between her thighs, rubbing against her mound, a finger sinking deep inside. She moaned.

"_I should resent you, for ensnaring me like this."_

Yes, they both were losers, but she could feign to be his hard earned consolation prize and go along with his wish of _Dah_, if that's what he needed from her.

Miraak was obsessed with control. He was always feeling like it was constantly tore from him, first by the dragons, then by Akatosh, even more by Hermaeus Mora. And now by her.

"_Faster."_

She whimpered and weakly tried to raise and wrap her arms around his neck, only to have both of her wrists forcefully pinned with his other hand over her head. She arched against him and whined.

"_Faster what?"_

"_Aah!... Faster please!"_

She threw a coy look and sheepishly writhed under his gaze, as he did exactly the opposite of what she begged, slowly withdrawing his wet fingers. It wasn't just him, she knew too, how to play well her part. He kept her pinned down while he unbuckled his belt.

"_Yes. Fate will not rob me again of what is rightfully mine."_

A long, long time ago she would have cringed at such proclamations, but now they only quieted her mounting anxiety, because she could feel it more and more, how her soul was starting to anchor with the plane of Apocrypha.

She didn't have the courage to break the topic with him, but she had really lost any hope of returning in Nirn. She couldn't help but wonder with a trace of paranoia, if he had already noticed, but preferred to make no comments. She was not nagging him anymore about every new theoretical possibility of escape he was studying, and he was perceptive enough to surmise everything from that subtle change. Nonetheless, she continued to help him in his research, or to be more precise, pretending to do so. They both knew it was just to keep him company, because she wasn't able to decipher at least three quarters of the books he picked, and it was more the time she got sidetracked reading weird novels or slacked off drawing silly sketches.

"_Miraak, I was thinking."_

She finally put down '_The Cabin in the Woods_'. She had not turned a page for at least some minutes.

Miraak was sitting on the opposite side of the large stone table, surrounded as usual by piles of dusty illegible tomes.

"_Mmm. Why the happy event?"_

He did not lift his gaze from a heavy, large tome she supposed was a lexicon he was consulting, to translate a thinner book written in mysterious glyphs.

"_Smartass. It's about us and our time together."_

"_I see, you are already in that stage." _

He commented airily, while he kept tracking the page with a finger.

"_Eh?"_

"_Dissecting the dynamics of the relationship."_

"_You really are a cretin. I'm being serious! Haven't you noticed that most of our interactions end to revolve around sex?"_

"_So?"_

"_So that's not good!"_

"_I beg to differ."_

"_Of course you do. I mean we should expand our activities, do something different."_

"_Like what?"_

"_Well..."_

He shut the Lexicon, wrote some notes in that scrawny calligraphy of his, and picked another book from the nearest pile. From the look it seemed of Dwemer origin.

"_Let me guess, we should refine our communicative skills, but you have no idea how."_

"_How... how in Oblivion do you know?"_

This time he stopped reading, folded his gloved hands on the desk, and bent conspiratorially towards her, to whisper in that condescending, deep tone too familiar to her.

"_You see, I am not blind. Hiding those Mara's pamphlets like a thief, how uncommunicative of you. _

_By the way, the activity you are looking for is conversation, so let's start, shall we? Tell me, how does one feel at being caught red-handed?"_

Sithis and damnation, he knew about the pamphlets!

"_I was not-"_

Oh Divines, had she really squeaked? She couldn't suppress the impulse of covering her mouth with a hand. How humiliating!

"_You, insufferable git! Stop laughing! Now!"_

She got back on track much later, when he was relaxing in bed, and thus had his guard down.

She dropped carelessly over him, with the grace of a horker.

"_I am not made of Stalhrim."_

"_Don't snooze then."_

"_And how could I now?"_

He must have thought she would remain quiet, because he closed his eyes again, so she went on sulkily.

"_There is nothing wrong with me reading Mara's pamphlets."_

"_Divines, still dwelling on that..."_

She tapped her finger against his chest to reinforce her point.

"_Because I know how you over-analyse things. Whatever is your conclusion, it's not it."_

"_Just let me meditate in peace, will you?"_

And with a hand he lowered her head to lay on his chest, in the hopes to lull her into shutting up. Like that had ever worked, it just made her ruminate more.

"_If you were in Skyrim, would have you married?"_

She could almost hear a silent groan.

"_And pray tell, why should I have?"_

"_Oh, silly me, of course not. You are so insufferable nobody would want you near."_

"_Except for you."_

"_How conceited. Stop misconstruing everything I say! Can't I ask anything out of curiosity, now?"_

She kept glowering at him, trying to wipe that annoyingly mellow expression from his face, but with no results. Time to change tactics.

"_Should I think you don't love me then?"_

The contraction of his facial muscles, and that almost imperceptible widening of his eyes, were enough incentive to deepen her frown, even though she was internally snickering. Oh yes, she had him cornered now! Let's see how he was going to weasel out from it this time.

"_You are getting too good at this."_

"_Ah-ah, flattery won't help you. Well?"_

She caressed his jaw, her chin tilted to one side, pulling off a soft gaze full of promises. Her parted rosy lips lingered just inches from his, as her long red hair, flowing between her shoulders, covered his field of view. Dibella would have been so proud of her.

He sighed, sounding resigned. Yes, flawless victory.

"_Be well aware that some gods won't bless an union between siblings."_

"_What?"_

"_We are children of Akatosh, aren't we?"_

He had even the audacity to smirk at his own ruse. She blushed in anger, how easily he sneaked off!

"_You and your damn roundabout ways!"_

So he won again at their little game, how unfair.

"_They won't work forever."_

"_Now, my dear, do not be a sore loser."_

In the end, after some more prodding, she rewarded him with a long, languid kiss.

Hermaeus Mora's mass of tentacles curled in the bottomless abyss, as his main eye watched all that happened in his realm from far away, beyond the dark veil of hidden knowledge.

All was flowing as... _**expected**_. Only a little... _**push**_ and it would only be a matter of... _**time**_.

He hummed contently and descended.

"_**I see you got well... acquainted..."**_

The Daedra Prince just ignored the Last Dragonborn's inhuman screech and continued his unperturbed buzz. Miraak could not blame her for almost make him deaf and choke his neck, after all an amorphous mass of yellow eyeballs and slimy tentacles appeared with no warning, from nowhere, and was currently dangling few feet away over their heads.

He threw at her a fast glance of warning and subtly moved forward to cover her from the Daedra's line of sight. Hermaeus Mora chuckled, yes, it was indeed... _**time**_.

"_**How... favourable... for you, to get along... so well..."**_

He drawled, not letting them an opportunity to question his sudden appearance.

"_**... now that... you will have to complete... a mission... in my name. You will retrieve... my Oghma Infinium... and punish those filthy followers of Stendarr...that dared to kill... one of my servants... and steal it... again."**_

The First and the Last Dragonborn exchanged an incredulous look.

Did they hear him well? Hermaeus Mora was really going to let them out of there, just to get a book? They could not even start to outline their thoughts in some form of sentence, Hermaeus Mora's tentacles had already sprouted from the floor to swallow them into the deepest blackness of the abyss.

* * *

**Dragon language:**

**Fus = Force**

**Ro = Balance**

**Dah = Push**

**Vik hi = Damn you**

**Dur hin sahkren = curse your tongue**

**hren punah = mad female**

* * *

**Author's notes:**

**That's the Prince of Fate for you, fickle and uncaring enough to pop out of nowhere and brutally scramble the lives of others for his own schemes, with no consideration of their wishes in the matter...**

**To Beawr, you got the right hunch, they had to escape, but not through their own means, it is canon that you can't deceive or hide anything from Hermaeus Mora, he knows everything that happens in his realm, creepy don't you think? To ****ViolenceIsAlwaysTheAnswer, don't worry, there will always be a lurking touch of darkness! To Evil Is Relative, thank you for the confidence boost! Yes, that's why it's fun writing him, he has this badass aura and at the same time is a pitiful mess. This is the last chapter with italics, pinky promise! To Guest, thank you! Yeah, I wish there would be more too, that's why I started to write this one, I had to contribute somehow.**


	9. Time - Fridas, 16th of Mid Year

**9.**

**(Tiid)**

**- ****Fridas****, ****16th of Mid Year: ****Mid Year Celebration**** -**

The vividness of Skyrim night sky was more intense than she had ever remembered, it almost scorched her sight with its breathtaking beauty.

A puff of humid, chilling air prickled her throat and filled her lungs.

That crispy air, so different from the lukewarm staleness of Apocrypha, it was too overloaded of so many pungent, different smells. She shook her head to avoid it in vain. Each new gasp of breath was quickly becoming unbearable, and she felt like its odd density was slowly chocking her.

She tried to calm, to inspire in a slower, steadier rhythm, but she just couldn't concentrate, not with that breeze, pounding into her head an overwhelming jumble of loud sounds.

She remained still, her gaze fixed over the hypnotic glow of the two moons of Nirn. Minutes flew away with the cold wind, as she waited for her numb senses to acclimatise again with the world of the living.

That same chill however, insidiously seeping inside her muscles, anchored her stupefied mind back to the harsh reality. They couldn't stay exposed to that weather for too long, especially her in that flimsy dress, or they would awake next morning, yes, but to banquet with Shor in Sovengarde. So she forced herself to stand up, despite the intoxicating overload of sensations, and looked around.

Miraak was still laying just a few feet away from her, and she crouched next to him, hesitating at first to touch him. From the way he was clutching his head, she feared his experience was being even worse than hers.

"Hey," she softly murmured, hoping to avoid any fleeing reaction, "Miraak? It's just me... I'll help you rise, so don't push me back."

He seemed to recognize her and nodded slightly, so she gathered his mask and the Black Book Hermaeus Mora left near him, and with one of his arms around her shoulders, she helped him walk towards the ruins she immediately recognized as his former temple.

She laid him over some pelts she found around the main hall, and he remained inert for hours, an arm covering his sight, as his jaws tightened to suppress a snarl of pain. By the time he recovered most of his senses, the flames of their little bonfire needed to be revived again.

When she returned with more ruined books, she found him sitting cross-legged in front of the fire, gazing pensively at the vivid flames, as he slowly stroked with a thumb the title of the Black Book in his hands.

_'Waking Dreams'_. She placed the pile on the floor and threw at him a suspicious glance.

Despite the sensory overload he was enduring, Miraak's lack of emotion was nonetheless puzzling. He was too quiet, for someone that in millennia had harboured the desperate craving of fleeing from Apocrypha. Something was definitely odd.

She, on the other hand, was internally quivering, doing her best to restrain herself from jumping around excitedly and squeak in joy, or loudly sing outlandish praises to all the Nine Divines in that off-key, squawk of hers. She was so happy, that she would have already clutched him in a lethal bear hug and cackled like a mad woman, if not for his current debilitation.

So she contented herself to just bend next to his ear and whisper in jest.

"No need to hide that foolish grin from me, you know."

If her hunch was right, she had to show him it was of little use wearing his mask.

"What? I... I am not!"

It was her turn to grin like a fool, the embarrassment in his voice was so limpid it immediately gave him away. In the end she couldn't refrain herself and she strangled him in a thigh hug, shrilling in glee.

"We are out! We are out! We are out!"

Her giddiness must have been contagious, because he let out a throaty laugh.

"That we are, indeed."

He then sighed though, suddenly sombre again, and she disentangled her arms from his neck, to frown better at him. So there was something to grind out, after all.

"Aren't you happy?"

"Of course I am."

"Why the sulking, then?"

"Don't be silly, I am not."

"Sure, that's why you are moping."

"You cannot refute with a synonym!"

"I can, when it's a fact. So?" She waited undeterred, her intense scowl pinned on his mask, until he finally caved in, with a guttural grumble.

"It is too good to be true."

"What do you mean?"

"His order."

"Well, it was bound to happen, sooner or later, right?" By the way he slightly inclined his chin, she could imagine the deadpan gaze he sent to her, as she completely missed the point.

"You are so exasperating! Can you for once be clear?"

"How can you be so slow is beyond me." He even snorted, the gall of that man.

"Remind me again, Dragonborn, what his exact order was."

She bristled at his heavy coat of haughtiness. "Are you messing with me?"

"Just humour me."

"To kill all of Stendarr's followers and fetch this Oghma book."

"And tell me then, what happens if we do not comply?"

It never crossed her mind that they could not complete the mission, she was too goal-oriented for that, and then there was Hermaeus Mora's threat of retaliation. However, now that she pondered about it, the Daedra did not set a specific date to complete his order.

She muttered absent-mindedly to herself. They technically could then, postpone the duty and stay in Nirn as long as they liked, and they would not incur in his wrath. A Daedra Prince could be many things, but he never went back on his words, not even one like Clavicus Vile.

"It should happen nothing, as long as we _are going _to do it. Oh."

"Exactly, 'oh'. The loophole it's too obvious, too convenient. This is another one of his schemes."

"So you think he is after something else. And what, then?"

He didn't answer right away, but mused for a while, like he was already pondering on the best course of action.

"It is certainly not the Oghma Infinium." An odd note of loathing stained his assurance, but his next statement was subtly revealing. "Hermaeus Mora's favourite lure, the proverbial carrot to make his designed pawn dance to his tune. This time though, it is a mere curtain of smoke and mirrors."

She had a hunch that she had to dig deeper, from the way he masterfully deflected to give again a straight answer. He was a walking tangle of conjectures, no way that he did not have at least one idea to share. Nonetheless, she didn't want any of his grim speculations to ruin her little bubble of happiness, so she let it go, for the moment. After all, they had so much time to brood about it later.

There was something though, that she had to make crystal clear, just in case, so she folded her arms and looked at him pointedly. He could be such a pigheaded, proud idiot and she didn't want to take any chances.

"Don't even think about completing the quest!"

The very insinuation offended him, it was visible from his sudden rigid posture.

"Do you really take me for a fool?"

"But you are thinking of ways to spite him, aren't you?"

Ha! His silence was more than enough confirmation. He was going to drag her in another mess.

"It's all-right," she conceded, with a wide flirty grin, and embraced his neck again. "I will indulge that rebellious, sexy streak of yours," and he scoffed, averting his gaze in a gesture that clearly concealed embarrassment, "as long as we do not end trapped there again. So now what?"

He cleared his throat, like he was still taken aback by her unusual choice of words. She took note for later musings, because if it poked, it was worthy of further investigation.

"First we need to retrieve enough gold from the Temple."

"There's not a coin there, I cleared everything with Frea. Every single urn."

"Do not worry, you did not take all the Temple had to offer."

"Seriously?"

"Yes, I doubt you reached the Sanctum Sanctorum." He stood up and offered her his hand.

"Come."

They ventured beyond the four main rooms, walking through that small passage that led to the large chamber full of hanging cages. She couldn't help to tense at the sight, even if it was nothing new, as she remembered Frea's speculations. He must have felt it from the hand he held, because he slightly squeezed it to get her attention.

"Yes, it is a gruesome sight. Alduin let them starve to death, an example to those that smouldered fantasies of rebellion, but I soon reciprocated. None of his bootlickers escaped my temple."

She did not comment, but quietly followed him, down to the pit and into the subterranean corridor. There was a lurking, cold anger and unapologetic smugness in his little admission, a clashing mix that left her even more torn and unsettled, between a crooked, but comfy sympathy and the acknowledgement of a viciousness she preferred to ignore.

They did not find any draugr in the crypts, she had done a very good job at clearing them all, and quickly passed through the deactivated swinging axe blades, to enter what Frea had identified once as Miraak's Sanctum. They did not stop as she expected however, and she noticed, while sending him questioning glances, how the gaze behind the mask scanned thoroughly the rooms they passed.

"You really pillaged everything." He sounded slightly piqued, like she had in some way unknowingly robbed him of his treasures. "What did you do with all that gold?"

"Remember the enchanted armour you ruined? Well, I paid a fortune."

"Oh, so you dressed up for the occasion," he mocked with uncalled for innuendo, just to grate her. "I am flattered. So I will have to buy you a new set. Again."

"Ah-ah. How generous of you. And whose fault is that? It's the least you could do!"

He did not raise to the bait though, too engrossed inspecting a wall. They were in a room with a desk full of paper rolls and spell tomes, a place she suspected was one of his study rooms once, and that she had nonchalantly rummaged only for gem stones to sell, like the lowbrow warrior she was.

"Here it is." He muttered, as he pressed a stone, at first sight completely alike to the rest of the wall. "We are lucky this hidden passageway exists." Oxidised mechanisms creaked and an open trapdoor appeared just next to the desk. He took her hand again and led her into the unknown passage.

"It would have been fairly easy to breach into the Sancto Sanctorum, if the secluded priestly section was still accessible."

The tunnel was pitch dark, tortuous and the more they advanced, the more it narrowed, forcing them to walk tightly next to each other. She squeezed her eyes as Miraak's renewed Magelight floated just few inches from her nose, blinding her. He stopped to cut another thick cobweb and threw a lightning bolt in front of them. A _Yol-Tol-Shur_ echoed in the tunnel, and the farthest flames charred some eggs and more webs. The whole path was infested by spiders and with all those stops it seemed to have no end, until he pulled a chain, partly hidden under a burnt spider nest.

Strong beams of light filtered from the cracked debris that covered a sturdy, but complex architecture, similar to a Dwemer vault. It took her awhile to recognize its function, as she touched in awe one of the nearest carvings. It was supposed to be an extendible dome, to let a dragon fly inside or just perch at the edges. The room was oval, wider than a Cyrodillic arena, and all the walls were richly decorated with Ancient Nordic motifs and panels of Atmoran celebratory events.

Impressionable amounts of treasures and chests shone from afar, piled at the base of the main, enormous statue that towered over them. Even if the intense light sparkled against the little mounds of gold, she couldn't sever her sight from the sculpture as she walked towards it. She sat on the embellished stone block, placed few feet away from its base, and let her entranced stare wander on all the little details. Those ebony wings, the ruby eyes, that unforgettable maw. They belonged to none other but Alduin, Firstborn of Akatosh.

"In this consecrated ground." Miraak's voice resounded behind her back, along with the faint clang of his boots. "In front of this very effigy."

He breezed past her, only to stop in front of the large, deep niche at the base of the statue, were precious urns and ceremonial robes were neatly guarded.

"All Solstheim priests convened to prostrate at its feet." He unlocked the small decorated lockbox.

"We were bound to bring offerings to Alduin's altar at the beginning of every season."

He took from the box a necklace and then, with little explanation, walked towards her, gently lifted her unruly mane and clasped it around her neck. She looked at her chest and observed the eerie glow of the gemstone.

"And this?" The necklace was clearly enchanted.

"It has an absorption spell." He drawled as he fiddled with the amulet. "Knowing your penchant for trouble, it will be by far more useful to you, than sold to a merchant."

He then rose his chin and looked contemplatively at the buried dome.

"Sometimes, he would perch on the top of the ceiling to observe the liturgy," he reminisced in a low murmur, "and then, he would grace the High Priest with the grant of one favour."

"Just one? What a skinflint." He chuckled at her grimace, but then added with a strange inflection.

"So you believe to be fairer? Would you truly bestow more favours?"

What a strange question, too easy to answer nonetheless.

"Of course!" She snorted. "I am by far more caring and merciful than him."

"Are you indeed?" A note of derision crept from his words.

"Then tell me, dragon of the north." His voice pitch dropped down, to a strange, mellow quality.

"Would you pardon the wretch, if he begged for forgiveness on his knees?" He grabbed tightly her upper arms, drawing all of her attention to the slits of his mask.

"Or sooth the ill-fated, if he crawled for your blessing?" The mask slightly pressed on her forehead, as if stressing the slight growl that raised from his smooth tone.

"Would you reward the devoted, if he grovelled at your feet?" And the metal then caressed her cheek, as she remained still in shock.

The ruthlessness of the World Eater, it went beyond her more morbid imaginations.

She could picture them, pinned under his glittering red eyes, and hear their cries for mercy while he burnt them alive. And the priests, all knelt around him, not even daring to raise their heads to watch the scene.

She could see why Miraak mastered the art of speech. Only through veiled prompts and artful ambiguity he could tear away some morsels of power, and preserve his pride from the brunt. It was no wonder then, how he had swiftly risen from the ranks to reach the top. Even if they demanded complete servitude, in the end dragons did not value those that humiliated themselves.

"Only someone soulless would not." She managed to utter, still digesting the notion.

"And you are a devourer of souls." A hiss resounded next to her ear. "That wretch would become nothing but your thrall."

"What are you saying," she whispered dismayed, "that I could be worse than Alduin?"

"You are."

She removed his mask and slightly gasped, there was no trace of jesting in his intense gaze. How could he talk to her with such carelessness. What was he implying, that power was going to corrupt her in the end? Then he didn't know her, at all!

"You are wrong!" She sputtered vehemently. "I am not like that." She would never forget her humble origins, or stop protecting her own lot. "I never will!" And she tried to stand up, to distance herself slipping from the stone block, but he stopped her, holding her waist and pushing her back, in a sitting position.

"Don't fret, you won't be." She could catch a bittersweet humour dancing in his eyes, as he cupped her cheek.

"I will not allow it." An odd edge of challenge sharpened that whispered assertion, but she could not mull over it, too distracted by the odd tenderness of his unexpected kiss. The softness of that lingering peck did not last though, as his dominant nature slithered to devour her mouth, and the grip buried in her messy hair tightened. And then she felt it, a pull in her sash, and fingers working to free the knots from the laces.

Her eyes widened, as she parted from his lips to regain some breath.

"Here?" Her wonderment came out faint, and not just for lack of air.

"And why not?" He questioned back in a husky, tantalizing tone. There were no doubts, in the lust flickering behind his calculating eyes, and she couldn't suppress a blush, regardless their familiarity.

Consuming an act of passion in his altar was just outrageous. Perverse. A warped mean of petty injury to a despised, deceased tyrant. Nonetheless, contemplating the very idea of doing it sent a jolt of thrill that startled her. She dampened her reddened lips. The _Dovahkiin_ shamelessly desecrating his shrine. The very thought sent shivers through her spine. The ultimate act of scorn.

She hurled her hands around his hair and pressed his lips to hers with renewed vigour, gaining a surprised, but pleased grunt. He quickly unfastened the last lace of her robe, and threw away his gloves.

His large palms roamed on her exposed chest, caressing her hips, fondling her breasts, and she clasped her thighs around his waist, grinding against his belt, while he smothered her collarbone with scorching kisses.

She arched back, parted lips and closed eyes, to relish in the sensation, even if she could imagine the true reason behind his uncharacteristic show of unrestrained ardour. He was just distracting her, to make sure that she would not back off from his brazen proposal.

She could not help but wonder, while she tried to deal with the hidden, intricate fastenings of his robe, if that was one of his long harboured, dark fantasies or just a spur of the moment. The thought vanished however, just like a puff of smoke, when he teasingly bit her neck. She unwarily sank her nails on his bare chest, a moan leaving her throat. He hissed, but was gracious enough to not retaliate with a harsher bite, so she guiltily caressed his torso, soothing the reddened long gashes, half-concealed by his down, and kissed his Adam's apple, as her hands slid to his abdomen, towards his hardness. He grabbed her wrists though, and rested her palms on the stone, behind her back.

"_Nid_, not this time, little _dov_." He murmured in that low, guttural voice he knew would unfailingly make her compliant. She remained tight-lipped in frustration, and watched intently, through half-lidded eyes, how he descended further to kneel between her spread legs, and linger over her sex, tickling her arousal with his warm breath.

The way his tongue flickered and dove between her swollen lips was excruciating, and she laid back on the white marble, writhing and whimpering without restrains, under the disquieting shadow of Alduin's wide jaws. He temporary alleviated her hunger though, thrusting one of his large fingers.

"You know what I expect." His smooth, low tone was resolute, earning an annoyed whine. There was always payback for his lavished dedication.

"Please, Miraak." She should have known better, than letting him free reins. "Don't be... mean."

"Say it." He slowed the motions of his fingers and purposely lapped around, just away from her burning spot. She bit her lip in frustration, instinctively bucking her hips against his lips. Always the same extortion.

"Please..." She gasped, when he slightly nibbled her inner thigh to stress his point.

"Say it." He wasn't going to budge, as usual.

"I..." And he flicked the tip of his tongue just once on her little, hidden swelling, to spur her on.

"I am yours..." She gritted her teeth, such a bastard. Simple begging wasn't enough for him anymore. She could feel his buried lips curve into a satisfied smirk.

"Go on." He growled hoarsely, already gloating over her next words.

"... and I need you." She whispered croaky, capitulating to his demand.

"Good." He arose and pushed her thighs wide apart, lifting her knees so that her calves rested over his shoulders, in his preferred position, the one that gave him complete mastery of movement, but nonetheless let him watch the swaying of her breasts, the way his thickness shoved inside her tight slit, and how she completely unravelled. The tip of his cock teasingly parted her entrance and she shivered.

"Will this ever assuage you, _Ysmir_?" He grunted softly, like he was questioning himself, and he sank deeper, savouring how her warm, drenched walls slid snugly around him.

A low hum escaped from his throat and his thrusts took a steady rhythm, in her opinion too slow for her liking. She had complied with his request and she was beyond flustered. She was entitled to get her needs satisfied!

"I want you harder! Harder!" she ordered and abruptly pushed back her hips, but he kept her still with a forceful grip around her thighs.

"Be quiet!" he reprimanded in a strangled hiss, slowing even more his pace.

She whined annoyed, observing the tenseness of his jaw. He and his insufferable overbearing nature, doing that just to mess further with her. But she always obtained what she wanted, she thought maliciously, in a way or another. So she bit her finger coyly and threw a sideways glance at him, arching invitingly her neck.

"It is not my fault, if you feel so good!" A flicker of undiluted lust escaped from his intent gaze and he sank harder. She licked her lips, internally sniggering, it was working as expected.

"Oh yes!" She went on sultrily, a wicked glee dancing in her eyes.

"Like that..." His strained groan and the jolt of his thrust uninhibited her more.

"_Geh_," she moaned, "fill your _mal __d__ov_ as the _Kriis_ _Sonaak_ is bound to do!"

"_Vik__!_" He hissed through clenched teeth, and swiftly slipped out of her, as if burnt.

And then he suddenly rolled her over, belly flat against the altar, a hand buried in her hair, while the other pressed on her back.

She heard his deep hoarse breaths but said nothing, resting her cheek on the white cold surface and waiting. She liked that position a bit too much for him to ever know, so she just closed her eyes and gripped the edge of the marble, shuddering at the craved sensation of being overfilled again, by a thick, throbbing heat.

She arched her back and pushed back a bit, earning only a tighter grip in her hair, that aggravated further her frown. Damn, why was he still keeping such a slow pace? By then he would usually let himself go, making her feel wonderful! She was going to complain that it was getting frustrating, and she wanted deeper and harder like always, when a hand covered her mouth and one arm encircled her waist. She felt his palm press on her mound and warm fingers slid around her aching clit.

The slow friction of his cock and the teasing of his fingertips were too much for her quivering thighs, and she moaned, pleasure shaking her core and spreading fast, overwhelming, through her whole shivering body, but it was not the same intense and shattering flight, the one she usually got from the far spot his fierce pounding reached everytime.

She felt him quickly slip out from her and heard a stifled groan. He was hunched against the corner of the altar, a fist tightened on the marble and a hand holding his spent member. His seed was spilt on the floor.

It did not take a genius to understand what he had done.

They did not comment on what happened as they gathered some treasures, and she did not try to chat him up to break the silence, like she was used to, when he enfolded her in a brown heavy fur cloak he found, to cover her light robe.

Even if she understood the reason, she could not shake away that prickling sensation of feeling unsatisfied and a bit resentful.

* * *

**Dragon language:**

**Ysmir = Dragon of the North. A title of the Dragonborn.**

**Mal dov = little dragon**

**Kriis sonaak = high priest**

**Vik = damn**

* * *

**Author's notes:**

**So this time the feel of the chap should be 'something is odd'. Tell me if I managed to do that, I love your feedbacks, they help a lot.**

**The chapter of _Tiid_ was supposed to be posted at least a weak ago. **

**I was sure it was almost ready and needed just a quick revision, here and there, until I reread it and thought, 'uhhh, but it feels rushed! Some consequences feel pulled out from a hat... That is on the edge of ooc... Perhaps if I add this... and that...' Needless to say, the original chapter became longer and longer, until I had to split it in multiple chapters. I swear I trimmed with a sharp axe. Every time those two open their mouths they manage somehow to muddle little parts of my careful planning. **

**To Wallowing Wisp: No matter which AU, that mad goat of Septimus Signius will always kicks the bucket. There's even an AU where he just dies of hypothermia. Did you notice how flimsy his clothes are?**

**To Meredith Sock: Thank you! May Talos bless your quests, too! Your review really lifted up my spirits. I hope you like this chapter the same too, even if there are changes of setting and pace.**

**To Guest1: Happy to know Hermaeus Mora passes the IC test! I was a bit worried there.**

**To Trace: However I wrote I couldn't be heartless too, tee-hee. No, no, you didn't miss anything, I just never named her for eight chapters. At first it was to follow the game style, the player's name appears only in missives, and then, too lazy to think about one. If I get the chance, I will subtly insert it somewhere, but for now free reign to readers' tastes.**

**To Guest2: Yeah, I agree with you, living in Skyrim is not a happy ending for anyone, period. Ah, so many tempting possibilities, but I can't confirm or deny anything! I can't spoiler my own story, right? About non-con, I don't think I could have pulled off believable, straight romance from two dragons in the beginning, especially with one with power issues.**


	10. Whirlwind

**10.**

**(Wuld)**

**- Loredas, 17th of Mid Year -**

She refused to let that off-key note ruin the enjoyment of her recovered freedom, and so curbed that stinging, lingering pang, diverting her attention to the stark, but nonetheless breathtaking, landscapes of Solstheim, until they reached the little Dunmer settlement in the afternoon. She chatted the time away with every merchant in Raven Rock, forgetting Miraak's quiet presence as he silently looked around. Her feeble excuse was that she had to butter them up first to sell the goods, even though they both well knew that in the end, it would be his silver tongue rising the final prices of every bartering.

It was weird how the citizens of Raven Rock did not recognize his voice anymore, even though he sparsely spoke to them. Fethis Alor however could not suppress an unintentional flinch, after hearing his succinct overture. He was after all, one of the few that suffered the most from months of mind control and lack of sleep, and was but few steps away from unwillingly joining his little crazy cult.

She, on the other hand, could not shut up for even a moment, and wasted most of her time talking about inanities with the blacksmith, as he tempered some armours. It was so gratifying to banter again with that old fox of Mallory, especially when he was one of the few that still remembered her, and how could he not? Many coins had flowed into his pockets thanks to her purchases.

That didn't deter her though, from pestering the Redoran guards on station, monopolize Captain Veleth's attention for half hour, or engage Adril Arano in small talk when he walked by.

She completely ignored that Miraak had long stopped walking few feet from her, just after his brief interaction with Milore Ienth, the local alchemist, and was instead standing arm-crossed in a shadowed corner, following her antics from a far distance.

"So, did we get enough?"

She asked, sliding her arms around his neck in a soothing way.

He nodded stiffly, seated in front of a desk with a small mountain of scattered coins.

She had to bury her head on his shoulder to stifle a giggle. Miraak was still bristling at the gold Geldis Sadri, that 'shameless gouger', as he kept naming him for the whole evening, had the audacity to ask for just a dinner and a room.

"It is no laughable matter!" He hissed, quite ruffled up. He had not calculated the cost of living to be so obscenely high, in comparison with his times. She thought wiser to omit the fact that Geldis's prices weren't expensive at all, but instead quite cheap, in comparison to other inns in Skyrim. The coins jingled against the wood when his fist abruptly slammed on the table.

"If I knew, I would have bartered to reach much higher prices!"

So that was the reason he had scowled for the whole meal, instead of relishing in all those bizarre Dunmer dishes, like she did with unladylike voracity. She learnt much later, when he was in a better mood and only by casual reminiscence, that his tastebuds had been burning, after he had nipped at some horker meat floating in the yam stew, and it had become worse, when he erroneously drank some Sujamma to wash away the sting. He had always disliked spicy flavours.

"You could have warned me." He added reproachfully and she rolled her eyes, waltzing towards the bed and unceremoniously throwing herself on it.

"You've always bragged about your haggling skills, how could I guess? So you miscalculated a bit, well, it happens. Deal with it and come to sleep."

He sighed wearily, unable to conceal like he would, how that mistake was searing his pride. He was obviously not used to the physical strain caused by the limitations of that plane. It was strange to reason in terms of dimensions, like Daedras did, but it was unavoidable, after her experience.

"You may, but I have to prepare a ledger, first."

"Ledger? Are you kidding?"

"Sensible individuals, unlike certain redheads, keep tabulations of their own daily expenses."

She let out an exasperated groan as she tucked herself under the pelts. "Divines, you really are a control freak."

She plunged her face deeper in the pelts, one eye still staring at the tremulous shadows Miraak's Magelight projected in the wall. The rhythmic scratch of his quill should have slowly lulled her into slumber, but after so many years of living in stasis, too much happened in just a single day.

Her mind was reeling, it couldn't stop replaying, like stuck in a loop, what had happened in the temple. That obscure feeling of distress resurged back even stronger.

The Magelight faded away and the room suddenly fell in deep darkness.

She heard some rustling, followed by the sinking of the mattress behind her back, and so she clutched tighter the pelt, waiting with some trepidation his expected approach.

Minutes ticked away and she frowned.

Not an arm around her waist, not even a little touch.

She turned towards him, even if she could see nothing, and nibbled her lip.

Perhaps he was just really tired and she should not infer anything from it.

Or maybe he thought she was already asleep.

She snuggled a bit and delicately pressed her nose behind his earlobe. She smirked at hearing the slight irregularity of his breathing, he was clearly awake, so she proceeded to tease him with a trail of swift pecks through his rough jawline, until she found the softness of his lips, and locked them in a sensual, wet kiss. All of her silly worries evaporated as he responded with equal fervour to her advances, pressing his hands around her nape and waist. Until he abruptly held her hands, stopping their further wandering beneath the hem of his shirt.

"Not tonight."

His voice carried the same strange stiffness it had in the temple, and she could still perceive some concealed tension from the slight tightening of his hold. Her presentiment tingled stronger, that did not bode well at all.

"Why?"

Her hoarse whisper shouldn't have sounded so tremulous. It took him some time to answer, like he was pondering on what was the best answer.

"I am weary."

The candour of his admission was baffling, knowing his ridiculous pride, nonetheless she preferred to glide on that detail, as the admission calmed her nagging misgivings. So instead of being dissuaded, she straddled him and bent to murmur sultrily next to his ear.

"Then relax and let me take care of you, the way you like the most."

The eagerness to carry on with her promise must have sounded quite lascivious, because the strength in his hold suddenly slackened and she could slip away her hands, to free his chest from the constraints of his robe, so that one hand could slip under his loosened belt and stroke his hardness. She bit teasingly the crook of his neck, earning a long groan, and smiled. He was already aroused like she wanted.

"Enough."

He suddenly sat, forcing her to clumsily fall back on the other side of the bed. A little ball of Magelight fluctuated again at the feet of the bed and he swiftly fastened again his robe.

"Not now. Not that way."

After hearing that terse hiss, she wasn't able to stop her distress from showing in her shocked stare. Her bold initiatives weren't after all a common occurrence, and not even the tiniest possibility of a refusal had ever formed in her mind. A glint of guilt flashed in his gaze, before he turned away and sat on the edge of the bed, hardening his expression.

"I would not be able to... restrain myself in time."

The justification of his refusal was even worse than being at the receiving end of one of his unexplained, cold silences, and a sudden want to weep snapped at her, piercing her like a bear trap. She managed however to keep the fort from collapsing, and only a strangled, raspy hiss escaped from her drawn jaw.

"Is it so appalling, then? The chance of getting me pregnant?"

Many undecipherable emotions crossed his face, but then rage predominated as he stood up, in a rare surge of pure, unconstrained hatred.

"I am done being Hermaeus Mora's pawn!"

He did not give her any chance to question what he meant, but walked away from the room, slamming the door.

She did not close eye for the remaining of the night. It was worse than she suspected.

**- Sundas, 18th of Mid Year -**

The next morning the coward was nowhere to be seen. He had not returned to their room, nor seated near Geldis Sadri's counter. Her belly grumbled and she internally groaned. Well, it was not the first time she was forced to skip a meal. She was going to leave the inn even more disheartened, when the Dunmer called her back.

"Hey, stop! Your companion already paid for your breakfast, so pick something, before going away."

"Ah, sure. And what do you suggest?"

"Well, we always have the new speciality of the house."

She sat on the far corner and munched another piece of Yam bread, brooding.

Paying for her meal was supposed to be a considerate gesture from his part, perhaps even an underhanded way to mollify her, but if that was his intention, it was firing back. She was getting more and more irked by the second.

She gritted her teeth, not having gold to even pay for a measly breakfast, how the mighty had fallen! It suddenly put into perspective how much she had debased herself, into depending so much on his unreliable, passing fancies.

She drank a sip of Sujamma to calm her turmoil and unclasped from her neck Miraak's amulet.

She inspected it for some minutes, looking pensive at how it shined, and then clutched it tightly. How mushy of her, she did not have the heart to sell it for some easy coins. After all, she rationalized, it would have not been different than taking more of his gold. It was going to be her last resort, then. She slipped it away in her pocket, and walked towards Geldis Sadri.

"I'm looking for a job. Have you heard some rumours, by chance?"

"Well, if you aren't a lucky Breton." He exclaimed with a crooked smirk. "Do you see this?" He put on the counter a bottle of unlabelled content.

"This is 'Sadri's Sujamma', best drink in all of Solstheim." He boasted. "All I need now is for lots of boozers to flock in here for it. And that's how you, young lady, come into play." He remarked raising his eyebrows in a meaningful way. "Five hundred gold. Deal?"

Not a minute later, she was outside the inn, looking around like a hawk. Her arms were full of little samples, jingling inside a cute wicker basket.

Gaining those coins from Sadri was getting too easy, she mused, like accidentally killing an innocent chicken. She just had to throw a smile, wave towards the potential costumer, and then shake the bottle in front of his face with some honeyed words attached. In less than three hours she had distributed almost all of the samples, no one was stupid enough to refuse a free alcoholic beverage, not even the group of soldiers that were off-duty for the day. To think that Geldis told her they could be troublesome.

She proudly waltzed towards the blacksmithing, intentioned to reel in the poor, unsuspecting Mallory, when a strong grip in her wrist pulled her into one of the narrow passages between some cabins.

"What are you doing?"

It was Miraak. From the clipped way he worded his question, she could catch that his nerves were more frayed than yesterday, even if it was too noticeable that he was trying too smooth it off.

So, she relished maliciously, in addition to not sleeping, he had already tasted the dubious pleasure of dealing with the captain of the _'North Maiden__'. _No amount of persuasion worked with Gjalund Salt-Sage, ever. Two hundred-fifty gold was the fee and two hundred-fifty gold he would get, each bloody time. He would not move his rattletrap for less than a single coin.

She scoffed, looked at him from head to toe with exaggerated scorn, and then threw at him her haughtiest, melodramatic look.

"And so he finally deigns to reappear. Isn't it obvious, great genius? I am completing a task."

He visibly tensed at her utter lack of common courtesy and folded his arms. Well, after how he treated her last night, she couldn't care less about his susceptible pride, she was not certainly going to offer him a shoulder to rant on.

"This is beneath you, Dragonborn." He retorted with clear disdain. "You do not need to complete such menial tasks." He artfully avoided to address the real issue, blatantly ignoring her theatrics. How cowardly. "I have obtained more than enough gold for any of your purchases." The forced smoothness gradually vanished under a growing amount of reproach.

She bristled at the subtle implication. If he was thinking to generously bestow upon her some kind of monthly allowance, like some pampered little brat, he had it completely wrong, by miles.

"Well, I like it, so I will do it the same!" She answered back, even more peeved. She had some pride too, for Azura, and she would not run to him and snivel to get any shiny bauble, like he surely hoped. What a bastard, as if he wasn't overbearing enough.

"I see." His voice suddenly flattened, devoid of any emotion. "And where is your coat?"

"Over the bed." She scowled puzzled, that was completely unrelated. "Why?"

"Go back and put it on." His terseness was assertive enough to rile her further.

"Are you nuts? It is too warm, today!" For Julianos, the coat was made of furs!

"That is irrelevant." He suddenly hissed. "You will not fool around anymore, not in such inappropriate attire." She gaped at him, nonplussed. What? "Your point is valid, nonetheless." He added, sounding slightly appeased, and then went on, suspiciously more amiable, gently grabbing her hand. "Come, I will buy you something more proper."

Now she was seeing red. This went beyond mere clothing. Who in Oblivion did he think to be, to dismiss her and then merrily come back, ordering her around like some common, dullard follower? She was the bloody Dragonborn! The Dragonborn! And she could do whatever she wanted whenever she pleased, even bounce around in jester clothes, shouting lame rhymes in the name of Sheogorath, and it would still be none of his damn business!

She stomped her feet and freed her hand with an abrupt jerk.

"Inappropriate?" She shouted. "Only my arms are bare, you prude idiot! The hem even reaches my heels!" She instinctively defended her choice, uncaring of the tiny issue, that the accursed dragon priest robe had been nonetheless picked by him. It was a matter of principle, she had to antagonize him.

"Don't be difficult." He stressed each word with a calm that was obviously fake. "You are not wearing anything under that vest."

"And only you know that." She muttered with some chagrin, but it was immediately smothered by more anger. "Nobody is the wiser!"

She shouldn't even waste her time justifying herself. The very fact was proof enough of how low she had sank. Just the thought made her blood boil even more.

"That's what you believe." He hissed through clenched teeth, suddenly grabbing her shoulders and pushing her back, against the wall. "How have you completed your task in such brief time?"

"Don't be ridiculous! Alcohol sells faster than sweet-rolls."

"Yes. That's why you shamelessly sway your hips while offering drinks."

"What?" This was getting more outrageous by the second. Resorting to underhanded, cheap shots just to win an argument. He wouldn't get his way, that was for sure now.

"I was just being charming! To saddle them with the wares!"

"You stupid girl!" He spat hoarsely. "Flaunting your curves in front of stranded guards! Are you seeking trouble?"

Guards? Her expression contorted in genuine rage. She had given the samples to those soldiers like hours ago.

"So you first dump me and then spy on me like a creep!" She shrilled furious. "Where in hell have you been last night?" There, she said it. She wanted to add 'with a hard-on', but she still feared to get a specific answer. "Tell me!"

"Ah, now I see." He hissed, his voice dropping to an ugly parody of his usual suave demeanour. "This is your way to spite at me." His grip tightened over her shoulders, like two sharp claws. "Prancing around like a little tart." That unexpected crude insult, froze her on the spot. "Or were you enticing them into sharing your wares in a secluded corner?" He rasped venomously, and then mocked with pure malice. "Good choice. Dunmer are certainly voracious and endowed enough, to sate all of your unquenchable needs."

She had Shouted at him, thrown fire bolts at him, and once, after a spar, when she had been really peeved, even tried to centre his smug, laughing face with one of her slippers. It was the first time though, that she had ever slapped at him with unconstrained, pure hatred. Her palm clashed with such force against the side of his face, that the mask flew away, clanking against the nearby wall, and then scattered in the mud few feet away from them.

Her hand stung from the clash against pure metal, but it felt just like the prick of a small pin in comparison to the growing burning around her moistening eyes. She quickly brushed them, to sweep away a traitorous leakage, and gnashed ferociously, like a pierced beast. He had crossed the line.

"You are the sick, disgusting, lecherous old man. Don't ever forget that!" She roared, with even more spite. He did not turn his bent chin to look at her, but schooled his rage behind a mask of impassivity, and that spurred her on, increasing her urge to burn him to a little crisp.

"You, miserable failure," she blew, each word even more scorching, "just thinking about what I let you do to me, to survive in that hell!" But it was not enough, so she bit down, hard.

"You are the worst affliction Peryite could have ever cursed me with!"

And then the final snap.

"You really make me sick."

She left him there, standing still in the shadowed corner.

He did not step into the inn that night, nor could be seen anywhere in Raven Rock. Now that she had plenty of time to cool off, and had imbibed a good dose of Sadri's Sujamma, she was starting to faintly regret her razor-sharp words, as she continued to stare at the closed inn's door.

**- Tirdas, 20th of Mid Year -**

Despite being crammed in that ship for a whole day, they had not spared a glance to each other. Only in one point they had seemed to tacitly agree, to avoid each other like the plague. Miraak had cloistered himself inside the main ship cabin, while she had stood outside, on the opposite edge of the ship, throwing up even her soul from sea sickness.

The term 'horrible' was not strong enough, to describe a journey that had seemed endless.

She had really been tempted to just skip the passage and wait for the next shipment, but then it could have been interpreted as a show of weakness. Why should she be the one fleeing with her tail down, when he was the one that should crawl back, asking for her forgiveness? Then there was also the fact that her passage had already been paid for, and she was not swimming in gold.

She silently grumbled, sitting inside Candlehearth Hall, a nail lazily grating on the wood of the table, instead of finishing her cooled supper. Geldis' gold was enough only to buy some decent gauntlets, and to clear an average tomb she needed at least a complete armour set. It meant she would be forced to work at a mill, and she disliked chopping wood or harvesting for hours, she always ended suffering of backaches, like an old, feeble granny.

As if her grim thoughts weren't bitter enough, a familiar shape walked up the stairs, making her completely lose what little remained of her mild appetite.

Her gaze accidentally crossed with the slits of his mask for an instant, but it was enough to incense her with renewed intensity. She bent her face on the opposite direction and silently seethed, her chin held up by one of her clenched fists. What the hell was he doing there? Couldn't he go to the Grey Quarter and disappear from her sight? She snorted, of course not, that place wasn't posh enough for his sensitive and refined tastes.

Nonetheless she couldn't stop from throwing quick peeks from the corner of the eye, following from a far distance how he strutted with nonchalance and stopped to ask something to the maid, as if he had not seen her sitting a minute ago. She bristled indignant, so the cocky bastard was not perturbed at all. And then she heard Susanna's laugh ring in the room.

She managed to maintain her composure, avoiding to grimace in displeasure and threw another longer glance, immediately noticing how he was slightly bent towards the woman, and how the maid smiled at something witty he must have said.

So the wretch thought opportune to shamelessly flirt with Susanna the Wicked.

She pursed her lips to stifle an unladylike snarl.

Susanna's reputation preceded her, even in the other Holds. She was infamous as that beautiful and busty Windhelm wench, that shamelessly egged all the male foreigners on, only to dump them all when they thought they had finally won her favours. Some say she had become so ruthless only after being ditched by a Chorrol captain, in front of Mara's altar.

No matter the cause, that woman carried with pride the title of 'The Wicked' for obvious reasons, and so she would have just sat back with a belly full of mead, savouring with gusto the pitiful spectacle of Miraak failing at courtship and getting his male ego heartlessly tramped in the process, if she did not know the true extent of his manipulative speech.

She could imagine the congenial smirk he was wearing behind his mask, while he masterfully threaded his web trap around the poor unsuspecting wench, using that hypnotic, deep cadence of his.

Her fiery rage abruptly waned, leaving its place only to a reforged, sharp as steel determination, the very same that possessed her during one-on-one battles. So that's how it was, parading in front of her face how easily he could move on. How despicable, he was surely doing it on purpose, to add more insult to injury.

Well then, she was not obliged to watch further, nor stand his wretched presence anymore.

He seemed to be completely distracted, and that was good. She was not one to be trifled with, but she would not cause some scene. She would slip instead away unnoticed, she had too much dignity to give him any proof, about how his mockery was being effective.

She silently descended the stairs, feigning to go to the counter to order something else, and then exited the inn. She marched quickly, almost running when she approached Windhelm main gates, and stopped in front of the stables. She had traitorously clang until the end, to a faint, stupid hope that he would had suddenly seen reason and done his amends by then. She really was an idiot. It was stupid to expect any better from someone like him. It was time to chop the last thread off, and start anew.

"I need a ride, now."

Her sudden, loud request abruptly woke up the carriage driver from his little slumber.

"For Mara, don't scare me so! And to where?"

She gave him his twenty coins and jumped on the back seat.

There were no doubts, the right choice was the most improbable and farthest one.

"Riften."

* * *

**Author's notes:**

**So were you expecting this sudden abrupt turn for the worse? I think this development was inevitable, stress, pride and temperament are an explosive mix. Susanna in this AU is alive, and the quest 'Blood on the Ice' has not happened yet, because, come on, she is one of the few Nords in Windhelm that is nice to Dunmer *cough*and to my DB*cough*! She deserved better than that, thus she got her little backstory. Couldn't Bethesda have offed that idiot of Nazeem, instead?**

**To Violence is Always the Answer: Thank you!**

**To Beawr: I will update regularly, next chapters are already molded so there should not be any author blocks or muses on holiday.**

**To MicroStarlight: Thank you for the support, I'm happy to hear you are enjoying it so far.**

**To Guest: A name with an interesting meaning, if not for the fact that her singing is so horrible... but I admit it would be ironic in so many levels. Mmm...**

**To Guest 2: As you have read, Miraak seems to have reached the same conclusions and is acting accordingly. Now the real question is if he's right, and if it is worth all the trouble. Yes, I want the option too! We have to pester the 'follower mod' author! Well at least we still can make him "carry our burdens" (evil cackle).**

**To Guest 3: Thank you! I was aiming for that, to give them a sense of normalcy, when their situation is far form normal.**


	11. Fury

**11. **

**(Nah)**

**- Turdas, 22th of Mid Year -**

Nobody noticed a plain, little Breton, sneaking off from the lateral door of the temple and mingling again with the market crowd. Nothing about her was remarkable after all, not her young features nor her armour, and the only distinguishable trait that could have caught some eyes, was well braided and covered by a paltry, fur helmet, too big to be carried by such tiny head.

She walked aimlessly through the streets, with her chin tilted down, too lost in thought. She would have been a tempting target for any pick-pocketer, if not for the obvious air of misery that surrounded her slow gait. They said even the Thief Guild had some standards, and when she tripped from one unseen obstacle, and her knees fell in an unexpected sludge of disgusting self-commiseration, she even considered the mad idea of joining their ranks.

She raised again, and slightly flinched when Miraak's Amulet, deep buried in her side pocket, briefly pressed against her thigh, reminding her of its presence again. Its cumbersome weight increased the more she tried to forget it, bumping against her side at each new step she pushed forward. Soon the need to get rid of it became irrepressible, when, like a burning coal, it started to wear down the already threadbare lining of her nerves. She sold it to an Argonian jeweller she met in the market, and went straight to the blacksmith's shop.

The owner, a Nord called Balimund, seemed to be quite the nice fellow, despite his rough, battle-scarred exterior. When he came to know about her current gold shortage, he even offered to buy from her some fire salts, if she ever found some during her travels.

After much pondering and some quick napkin calculations, she opted to buy the cheapest armour, a simple fur set, in order to get two Dwemer quality swords. She was used to wear so much better, but for her current purpose it was more than fine. She planned only to explore some nearby caves for some easy treasure hunting, so she would just rely on the speed of her offensive combat style and the power of her Thu'um, to kill all the wild beasts she was surely going to encounter.

It was strange how nobody noticed her as she passed, how she could stroll around without feeling a scorching gaze subtly lingering behind her back, following all of her movements.

It was unsettling, not being the centre of any attention.

The familiar knot in the stomach intensified and she mentally scolded herself again, for her unacceptable lack of spine. That slight nausea had not left her any respite through the whole travel, it was not receding like she hoped, and to her growing frustration, none of the god's blessings were having any positive effect.

At first she had knelt in front of Mara's shrine to get some restoration from her sickness, but then noticing that nothing seemed to change, she tried to gain some fortitude through Arkay's benevolence. It was not working either, and that was putting a dent on her plan. Only a fool would venture in the wild without a calm mind and full, physical strength.

So she resorted to wait, sitting slumped in a secluded corner of _'The __Bee and Barb'_. Sooner or later, it had to go away, right?

It had started innocently enough, with little sips of that famous Black Briar mead Lydia had always told her to never drink, ever. Her nagging, no non-sense, familiar voice floated in her mind. The Dragonborn had to always be at the top of her form, be ready for any fight, carry out flawlessly her duty. And of course, that beverage was too strong for her little physique, so it was out of question.

Nonetheless, the Argonian bartender, Talen-Jey, told her in clear, rude terms, that she could not slack off there, warming the chair, without spending any coin. Considering that she was in the very city that produced the best mead, and also her lack of appetite, she ordered a pint, just to indulge her sorry self for once.

She was supposed to stop at one, like the little good, responsible bore she had to be, but then she noticed it was making her feel suddenly more lively. As she suspected, Lydia, like a typical overprotective Nord, had just been coddling her like some silly, little milk-drinker.

"Another, Talen-Jey!" She cried, waving her palm in the air. She was a seasoned warrior and the ultimate dragon slayer, she could surely handle some more Skyrim alcohol with little problems!

After the third drink however, that unbearable, sickening disorientation, the same one that stalked the back of her mind for the whole morning, assaulted her senses with renewed ruthlessness. She drained a third pint of Black Briar, in hopes of intensifying the pleasurable intoxication and return to the previous soothing numbness.

It did not seem enough though, so this time she asked for the whole bottle. However, no matter how much more she drank, it still couldn't sweep away the horrible whirlwind of confused memories, that made her mind spin like a crazy whirligig.

She hit the mug on the table, spilling some mead, and whined exasperated. What in Oblivion was happening to her? She was behaving like a bloody wimp!

It was only a matter of time, she consoled herself, as she refilled the mug again.

It was just loss of familiarity, an abrupt change of environment!

New people, no familiar faces, a sudden loss of assurances...

Nothing new, been there, tackled down before, like her first weeks in Whiterun.

She would soon return to be the same strong, independent, carefree woman she had been, before putting foot in Solstheim.

Yes, she thought as she lifted the mug to her lips, she only had to stay far away from that cursed wretch and erase from her memories everything that happened before then.

Everything.

One of her elbows pushed the empty mug to the floor.

Yes, yes. That was the best solution. It had never happened.

She lifted the bottle and drank another sip directly from its neck.

How he hated him. He reduced her to a shadow of her previous self!

How she despised herself... How could she let him reduce her so, in such disgraceful state?

But she would retain the lesson, oh yes. She set the bottle down with a bang, gaining the attention of some irked costumers. Avoid men at any cost! They were only a source of trouble and not worth it! She would slay them all, if required! None of them would ever have a chance to even blink at her, ever!

Oh yes, now she was recognising herself again.

It was then, when she raised her arm to ask for a new mug, that she overheard an interesting conversation going on near the counter. She had been too distracted by her misery to notice the unnatural amount of frightened people trembling in front of the entrance.

"That's a joke, right?"

It was the innkeeper, talking to a courier out of duty, or so she deduced, looking at his type of pouch.

"If only I was. Three cities have already been attacked yesterday."

"No!" The Argonian gasped, covering her mouth. "But that's terrifying! Which ones?"

"Solitude, Markath and Falkreath."

"For Mara and Dibella! Why they don't just leave us be?"

"Who knows what those beasts want. Perhaps it is just another skirmish and it will fly away."

She rolled her eyes and groaned. She had disappeared only for few years and the dragons were already out of control? An unrefined burp left her mouth. To think that Paarthurnax assured her they would all have been converted to the Way of the Voice by then. Yeah, sure. She grabbed her sword and wobbled out of the door. She couldn't even mope in peace anymore.

And there it was, the blurry silhouette of a _dovah_ perched on a roof and frying some guards. She sighed and tried to focus its form, squeezing her eyes to little slits. No, she concluded, she really wasn't feeling very well to deal with it alone, so she raised her chin to the skies and shouted with all the power in her lungs.

"_ODAHVIING!_"

Seconds ticked as she waited, her heartbeat thundering in her ears. Would Odahviing still answer her call?

A proud roar pierced the skies and her chest swelled in joy, when red majestic wings shone under the sun.

"_Dovahkiin! Ahst laat hi rein!"_ The dragon's rumble shook the ground, and terrorised, high-pitched screams rose around her, but she just stood there, with a goofy grin plastered in her face. _"Veyn lost hi kosaan?" _

She clumsily waved her arms in the air and shouted back, stifling a gleeful laugh. "Sorry! No time to explain, I need your help first!" She pointed at the ancient dragon soaring over their heads, but Odahviing kept staring at her, with what seemed a dumbfounded expression.

"_Krosis_, did you really understand my _rot_?"

"Of course," she frowned, "Is that so weird?"

The red dragon puffed what seemed the equivalent of a snigger, and then regained altitude.

"Knowing your fangs, _geh, __kung__. Yol-Toor-Shul!_"

The two _dov_ engaged in a deadly flight, and she blinked bemused, until his comment finally hit home. The brass of that dragon! She snorted, Odahviing had not changed a scale. Nonetheless, he was still following their tested strategy flawlessly, forcing the other _dovah_ into flying far from the centre of Riften and floating beyond the city walls, so that she could shout Dragonrend in a safe place.

She skittered out of the city, never leaving the shape of the two dragons out of her sight, ready to shout again, when an unexpected, powerful gush of wind hit her back, pushing her forward with unstoppable force. All of the air she saved for Dragonrend left her lungs, and her body crashed far away, rolling in the grassy ground.

A hoarse growl reached her ears from afar.

"Did you truly think, to be rid of me so easily?"

Her glossy eyes widened in apprehension, a burst of foreboding tightly clamping her stomach, and she quickly tried to stand up without stumbling. She did not need to detail the unfocused blueish form to know who was fast approaching her. And then her mind did something incredible, given its numbness. Dragon, Miraak, attacks. It made the connection.

"You!" she blurted out, rudely pointing an accusing finger, "You attacked the cities!" Her dumbfounded dismay rang too clear from her loud cry, more than she wanted.

"Why?" She went on. "Why doing that? You put in danger lots of people!"

The moment her word left her mouth, she mentally cringed. Instead of sounding righteously accusing, it was simple-minded and shrilly, and that didn't help keeping on a tough façade.

Far from being unsettled though, Miraak merely snorted and just stood proudly erect, arms folded, not even trying to deny them.

"It was the fastest way to lure a certain little heroine out." He purposely spat out those last words like they were dirt, and a renewed surge of dread overcame her. He knew very well that her home was in Whiterun, she had always been blabbering little anecdotes about Dragonsreach and its people during their time in Apocrypha. It was the main reason she chose to stay far away from the place, it was too predictable and risky.

"If you dared to attack Whiterun...!" She managed to choke out, unable to curb her anxiety.

"I did not waste my time there." The unrestrained hatred in Miraak's scorn was worrisome.

"Scuttling away in one of the farthest holds, like a little rat. How weak-minded and predictable." And even more unsettling, was the fact that he did not care to conceal his barely contained rage, nor seemed to have any qualms to implicate others in his rampage.

"But we have a pending matter to settle, you and I." He added menacingly.

She couldn't deal properly with him though, not with the butterflies in her head and the nagging worry that an ancient dragon was still threatening the city. In Riften there was the orphanage, for Mara's sake! To Sithis him and his sense of timing.

A sudden dizziness overtook her, so she rested on the nearest outer wall, pulling off her most cheeky pose to conceal it.

"And now you found me, so make him stop." She drawled, flaunting her lack of tension as if it was truly premeditated, sounding thus incredibly insolent and sure of herself. It was a handy trick she often used when she was losing too much blood, to mislead the enemy.

"Very well." he conceded smoothly, but from his stiff, straight stance he was clearly peeved by her act.

"_Viinthuruth__, __zii los di du_."

He just stood there, impassive, as golden flames flowed into him. Her face blanched.

"Why that look?" He viciously taunted, gloating at her unconcealed reaction. "Wasn't that what you asked for, Dragonborn?"

Odahviing. Even in her heavy stupor, her mind couldn't stop repeating his name like a mantra. Her protective instincts kicked in and she unsheathed both of her Dwarven swords. That simple gesture though, enraged him even more.

"So that's your choice." He hissed, like a rattlesnake ready to strike, but with a disconcerted touch of dismay. However it was quickly smothered by a baleful, severe murmur. "Then this will be over soon. For you."

The cold steel in his statement sobered her enough to cross her blades in a basic defensive stance. He was going to charge at her, when an unexpected breath of powerful fire forced him to cast a deflective spell.

"Odahviing, don't!" She shouted in vain. The red dragon did not deign her of a glance, but floated few feet over her head, his fiery eyes never leaving his new target.

"Miraak!" He thundered, but a sliver of pure dread was nonetheless detectable in his roar, he had watched at first hand, how Vinthuruth had been easily devoured. In spite of it all though, he was still trying to aid her in some way, and that really touched some tender strings inside her heart. How could old 'Viing be such a wonderful, but meddlesome idiot?

"_Drem Yol Lok_, Odahviing." Miraak did not bother to conceal any of his contempt. "Very foolish of you, to attack me so. Then now you too, will bend to the _mul_ of my _Thu'um,_ like all of your kin."

His threat shook her from the core, especially because behind the arrogance of his voice lurked an eager glee of malicious anticipation. Her guts twisted at what was going to come next, the Bend Will Shout, and then swiftly after... She didn't dare to imagine it, but immediately acted.

Her _Fus Ro Dah _hurled him against the trunk of a nearby tree, leaving him breathless for some precious seconds.

"Odahviing, go! Tell the others to stay away from this zone! Fast!" She ordered frantically, shooing him away with her arms. "Do not leave _Monahven_ for any reason at all!" She had never sounded so frightened, so completely opposite to that cheeky, careless forwardness he was used to, and that alone alarmed the red dragon.

"In what mess did you fly into, _Dovahkiin_?"

"Not now! Just go!" She screamed exasperated. It was that shrilly, unvoiced final 'please', that stopped Odahviing in his tracks, and extinguished the burning spark of a new, vehement protest. After casting a worried glance, but resentful enough to bid her no farewell, he reluctantly flew away, and she finally sighed in relief, feeling that squashing burden lift away from her shoulders.

It was short-lived though, because heavy, determined steps marched forbiddingly behind her back. She turned to face him, ready to dodge any type of destruction spell he could have thrown. Miraak had recovered from her _Thu'um _too fast for her liking, but at least Odahviing was safe from his wrath.

"Impressive." He commented in a clipped tone. "Odahviing, right-hand of Alduin, following your orders without any coercion." The slight awe present in his tone though, swiftly shifted to plain, accusing grudge. "In league with dragons are we, now?" He tutted reprovingly. "How unsurprising of you. _Wuld_."

She had but a blink, to parry his cleaving blow, her heels slowly sinking in the soft soil to counter his brute strength. His golden mask was inches away from their clashing blades, the resentment in his growl unmistakable.

"So easily you betray me, after all this years." He spat with unprecedented ferocity. The blades screeched as they slid against each other, and she had to put forth all her strength to stop her knees from giving up.

"After all I have done," he growled like a rabid beast, "and you flee at the first opportunity!" He retreated back with a sprint and then flung forward, almost making her lose her balance.

"I surrendered to fate the key of my destiny!" he stressed with more venom. She managed to hide her uncertainty rolling to the side, just in time to avoid an horizontal swath from his sword and wobbly stood up, just to raise both of her swords to halt another assault.

"I renounced to unlock the gates to my freedom," he suddenly disengaged and spun to lunge at her back, as he had done in many of their spars, and she automatically twirled backwards to match again his blade, "only to be compensated with piddling treachery!"

His raw shout shook her hearing with such thundering, boiling accusation, that her already frail, almost non-existent dig broke with a loud crack. The gall he had to play the victim!

"You, vile fraud!" She lunged forward. "Wretched scum! Rotten, ugly troll!" A flood of obscenities poured down on him with a high deafening screech.

"Waste of Sithis!" She roared in her frenzy, and he quickly was forced to retreat from a rain of slashes, or just to preserve his hearing. "Foul spawn of Sanguine! You dare to talk! After calling me a trollop!"

"That does not justify your prompt defection!" He hissed back in defence, but from how his tone slightly wavered, it was more to avoid the admission that he was partly in the wrong, and she was after all, due an apology. However he quickly recovered, and went on with even more grudge. "And your tongue was no merciful balsam either!"

"And then you shamelessly coo with that hussy wench at the inn!" She swung her swords with alarming, unpredictable carelessness, and he retreated more.

"What?" He exclaimed, sounding clearly flabbergasted, but his protest was drowned by even higher screams, each of them very well stressed with blows, lethal in brute force, but sloppy in their aim.

"I hate you! I hope you die! I hope you got brainrot, too!"

"So you left me because of unjustified jealousy." His voice suddenly dropped to his usual, low assertive smoothness, but a tinge of surprised calculation was nonetheless still detectable.

"Me jealous? You wish, arrogant jerk!" Her deranged voice instead was getting hoarse and raw from too much yelling.

"I was just ordering a meal, you fool."

"Don't try to play innocent! I saw! I saw!"

"Your aim is clunky." He suddenly commented with a calmness, that was usually reserved to soothe wild, skittish horses, and how could one blame him, she was brandishing her swords like they were one-handed maces. "And as you see, I am restraining myself." He went on with a trace of uneven breath, as he dodged her swords just seconds before they could slice his shoulder. "So desist and stop this foolishness, now. Do not force my hand."

He lunged forward, in an attempt to anticipate her next assault and gain some ground, but she tripped, like a novice, on her own very steps. The force behind the leap was too powerful, and his abrupt slowdown could not stop his Daedric poisoned blade from plunging her shoulder and descend diagonally to her hip, tearing the fur like common paper.

She laid motionless on the ground, stinging warmness seeping from her back and forming a sticky pool around her waist, soaking the fur. She twisted her nose, the fresh grass was tickling her face.

"Don't move!" The odd anxiety in his tone should have warned her of the gravity of her situation, but she could only feel her head pounding. Stupid mead. Her dizzy sight slowly obscured and her lids drooped more. Her cheek suddenly stung.

"Stay awake!" A sharp bark reached her muffled hearing. Had he really pinched her? She should have slapped him for that, but instead laid still, and not certainly because he had ordered her so. An odd tiredness was creeping around her limbs, sedating her muscles.

"You were supposed to block such a simple blow!" The far echo of a hoarse shout made her blink. It carried the same distress of someone abruptly forced to fix a a hazardous negligence.

An annoying buzz diffused over her back and penetrated inside her numb ears, making her frown. It was identical to the bothersome hums that could be heard in Whiterun, when one walked near Kynareth's temple.

"Foolish girl! How much alcohol did you imbibe?" His angry yell sounded oddly panicky.

"How-How do you know?" She slurred, confirming his suspicion.

"The wound is not responding to the mending as it should." His gritted hiss resumed a more smooth quality, similar to the professional detachment of Danica Pure-Spring.

"Oh." The light and its hum became even more intense.

"Did you see?" Her own voice was barely a rasped whisper, but she did not seem to notice and went on. "I could keep up with you even a bit tipsy!" Now that the rabbit was out of the hat, she could at least rub it in his face, right?

"You are drunk, stupid ninny, and you are forcing me to cast Healing Wounds." There was a renewed strain in his voice. "Bless Lorhkan I did not tap my magicka pool before."

"You ruined my armour again, how annoying." She drawled with a heavy tongue. It may have been inconsequential for him, but it was her bloody gold. His resigned sigh was amplified by the mask. "We will buy another one."

"Uh. Your magicka itches. It tingles. Like lots of ants. Stop?" She blurted out of the blue, and then giggled, after hearing another longer, weary sigh. Perhaps she really was a little drunk, but just a bit.

As abruptly as the hum disappeared, she felt arms slide under her waist and lift her up like a potato sack. "I can walk." She grunted, peering around to catch some unwanted stare.

"Put me down, idiot! This is embarrassing!" She swung wildly her legs in the air, in a clumsy tentative of kicking him away, when she noted with alarm that they were approaching Riften eastern gate. "Did you hear me?" She screeched and wiggled, only ridiculing herself further in front of the two sniggering guards.

Miraak just grumbled something unintelligible, and with one arm tightened his hold around her knees. "Stop it, and no, you can't. You will stumble like the pitiful drunkard you have become."

He stepped into _'The Bee and Barb'_ and nodded tersely to the Argonian owner, quickly throwing on the counter a small pouch he managed to quickly grab from one of his hidden side pockets, and proceeded to go upstairs.

"How did you buy that armour, did you steal it?" He asked with a slight grunt, while climbing the stairs. She did not even hide her rolling eyes and puffed. Great, he expected answers now.

"I did not, nasty-minded bastard. I earned them square and fair for your information!"

"Well, you needed not." From the way he spat those words, she knew that he was sneering. "Especially in light of their undermost benefit." Even if his voice had regained its velvet low cadence, it was obvious he was still irate. A discordant, lurking contentment though, smoothed the sharpness of his following tirade. "Such recklessness. Did I not tell you I would have provided it for you? Mm? But of course, perish the thought, that you would exercise even some little common sense."

It was his authoritative tone though, not the rant per se or the insults entwined in it, that sent her ballistic, despite her current daze.

"I don't need your support! I didn't before and I certainly don't now!" She tried to hollow in his face, but only a weird cry came out from her throat.

"Yes, and how well you are handling it, addled in alcoholic stupor." There was a note of annoying gloating, in his condescending comeback.

She did not have time to mull on a decent retort, he had already entered the room, and laid her on the bed. "Wait here and don't move."

She grunted irritated, he was still ordering her around. However that line of thought died away soon, as her gaze lost itself, and she blinked at the wooden framework of the small ceiling, too many crossed girders.

Heavy, metallic steps could soon be heard again, passing through the corridor and then stop.

As fast as the wooden door creaked, the metal wires of the door sprang with a loud click and Miraak's shadow covered her face, distracting her from the ceiling patterns.

"Here," he said succinctly, "the innkeeper has been gracious enough to sell me this." And threw over her chest a green maid garb. She tilted her chin to the other side and folded her arms stubbornly. "I won't wear that stupid dress!" She was a warrior, not some common tavern wench!

"Enough of your childishness." The hiss resounding behind the mask left little to the imagination. His teeth were clearly clenched in an ugly snarl. "I'm really getting tired of it." And that was an understatement. From the way his fists were tightly squeezed at his sides, he was more than peeved, he was positively seething.

"Then just go and leave me be," she snarled back, uncaring or oblivious of his anger, "I am already used to it." She added with cold disdain.

"Very well. As you wish then." His tone returned to his terse, but low, controlled smoothness, as he turned back towards the door. "Don't expect me to come back." His gloved hand gripped the door handle.

"I do not." She added scathingly, but then added. "They never do."

It was murmured with reproach, a fleeting afterthought fruit of a gloomy daze, not intended to reach his ears or to be shared, but it escaped, nonetheless. He stopped from turning the handle and stood there, still.

"They." He said out loud, almost like he was tasting the word, and then remained silent for some time, as if he was quickly analysing the matter. He had always been too much perceptive and shrewd, for her liking. He could have asked many easily irrelevant questions, like 'who', but he nailed instead the right one. "Why?" He worded, slowly and loud enough, so that it could not be ignored.

A little part of her brain, the one that was still lucid, told her to shut that big mouth of hers or lie through her teeth, but the rest was too numbed, so she just carelessly blabbered, because, well, it's not like it would have changed anything.

"They just don't like it." She explained with an airy tone, like it was so incredibly obvious. He slightly turned around, and threw a calculating gaze at her.

"Like what?" There was suspicion in his voice, like he was, for a brief moment, truly considering that she could really be pulling his leg.

"The truth." She stated matter of factly.

"Explain." His hand left the handle and completely turned to stare at her. He was now intrigued.

"They first go all gaga. When they meet the Dragonborn. And so they expect. Ask, ask. To do this and that. But it is enough. They see past." She waved oddly her hands in the air to accompany her disconnected phrases and her deep frown, like she was explaining a very difficult concept. And then dropped her arm, suddenly brooding. "They don't even try to remember my name."

Some seconds of silence ticked away as she stared morosely at the ceiling.

"I... see." He commented at last, sounding quite taken aback.

"So that is the issue." He muttered more to himself, than to her. "Is that what you truly believe?" He questioned, in a more assertive tone, while slowly approaching the edge of the bed. "What about Lydia, then." His large shadow was looming again over her, his tall shape obscuring the lamplight hanging from the wall. "She never left your side."

"She is my Housecarl, she thinks it is her duty." She looked straight at his mask. The flickering lights gave to it an ominous look. He continued undeterred.

"Paarthurnax. He was your cherished teacher, wasn't he?"

"Only because I am the Dragonborn."

"The Greybeards, then." His tone became suddenly more slow and deep, almost hypnotic. "You told me they welcomed you with unexpected warmness."

"They follow Paarthurnax's lead, they were bound to do so." He sat on the edge of the bed, next to her waist, and went on.

"The ones that helped you during your first hunts." His delicate prodding was strangely soothing.

"Delphine and Esbern?" She muttered disoriented. "They are the Blades. They swore to serve the Dragonborn."

"Odahviing. He tried to protect you from me at great risk, you can't deny it."

"He promised his fealty if I defeated Alduin." She must have sounded too pained, because he grabbed her hand and squeezed it lightly, to catch her attention.

"This self-defeating attitude does not belong to you." He commented resolute, his tone suddenly sharper. "This is just the alcohol and the loss of blood taking their toll."

"You know nothing!" She barked, but as soon as her temper exploded she returned to that eerie, spaced-out calm. "As I said, you are no different."

His shoulders stiffened. "What makes you believe so?"

"I only grabbed your interest because of my title and all those stupid books you read." She whispered that, like she was commenting the outside weather seen from a window, however her expression abruptly morphed in an ugly snarl. "Well, I am not like all those idiotic bards sing about, I will never be." And then continued with the same previous candour, as if nothing. "Sooner or later you will have enough too." And then added with a note of arrogant, challenging superiority. "Ha! You will see." It was ruined though, with a slight grimace.

"So you read only one of those books and only a little part." Miraak's tone turned darker, as he slightly inclined over her, to stress his point. "I assure you, I know more about you than you credit me for." He gently held her upper arms and pulled her in a sitting position.

"Yes, sure." She grumbled, as he lifted her legs to rest them over his lap.

"What if I tell you then, that every single detail written in those books change every time the reader turns to the next page." He added slyly, as he pulled out one of her boots. "Or when you make even the most insignificant choice." She squirmed the toes of her feet, suddenly chilled by the fresh air.

"Are you telling me that," she inclined her head to look at him baffled, while he started to unfasten one of her gloves, "that I won't attack Windhelm for the Imperials? Or hunt vampires?"

"You could, or you could not." He answered vaguely, as he passed to the other glove. "I've read them over and over, so many different, discordant paths, and believe me, I know how much you may shine, but also many facets of you worst side." He took off the fur helmet from her head and dumped it on the floor, together with the other pieces.

"These little theatrics of yours," he remarked with some contempt, as he loosened her unkempt braid, "are nothing in comparison." An then started to unclasp the various buckles of her armour.

"Tell me," he went on, as he freed her chest from the leather fur, "do you really desire to fulfil this silly self-prophecy of yours?" He did not give her a chance to shake her head, he had already put the dress on her. "Then stop acting like a fickle, spoiled Daedra." He acidly stated, and she couldn't stop from blushing at his sudden, harsh reprimand. She tried to hide it as she wiggled to fumble with the laces, but he turned her around and took over.

"I have been tempted to retrieve the Oghma Infinium," he abruptly admitted in a darker mood, as he fastened the last lace with a tight pull, "and be done with all of this."

She swiftly turned around incredulous. "You would never!"

"I would." One of his gloved hands gently rested on her cheek and tilted up her chin, a sharp contrast to the threatening edge of his low growl. "If you force my hand."

She continued to stare at him dumbfounded.

"You look very pale," he commented casually, as he played with one of the curls that rested over her bosom, "you should get some sleep."

He was going to rise up, but she grabbed his arm and pushed him down.

"Wait. Why in Oblivion would you ever want to go back?"

He sighed quite irritated, and then stood up. "Must I always spell everything out for you?" He grunted out and walked towards the door.

Even in her addled state she could see it was just a mean-spirited bluff, an inconsistent threat to just keep her on check. No way that he would be so vindictive, and do that just to spite her. However in a warped, completely twisted sort of way, it was the sweetest thing he had ever said to her. Later, she would have blamed it all on the alcohol. It was easier, too convenient, and probably even half true. In that moment though, she just knew she didn't want him to leave, so she leaped forward to grab his waist, and with a strength she wasn't even aware she was exerting, she slammed him against the door. He did not have time to react, or question her crazy behaviour, because he was already being dragged to the floor by the crash of her weight, tightly clasped against his body.

"What the..." He tried to shout, but she tore off his mask and took advantage of his shocked bewilderment and shut his mouth with a fierce, demanding kiss. She was too light though, and he easily rolled her down, pinning her arms at her sides. When she looked up, her eyes prickled at the sight. His face was contorted in pure rage.

"Enough!" He spat with such vehemence, that she instinctively cringed. "You clearly are not in a right state of mind!" A tear slid down her cheek. "I won't lengthen the list of your recriminations." He gritted more subdued, as a sob escaped from her throat, however his moment of faint regret did not last much.

"Are you truly so desperate," he added in a low, cold hiss, "that you would throw yourself at my feet at the mere mention of losing your freedom?" Her chest was shaking now, and tears rolled down freely, but his grip around her wrists tightened, and he went on ruthlessly.

"Do you truly think," and his tone dropped even lower, to a strangled hiss, as his eyes thinned to mere slits, "that your wiles would still work, after you flat-out said I make you sick?"

"I said that to hurt you!" She bellowed in his face, but he did not even flinch.

"And nothing plunges sharper than the steel of raw truth, right?" He hissed back, with pure venom.

"Yes, but you don't understand!" She shrieked as she thrashed about to free her arms, but his hold was too firm. "It gets worse when I'm far away!"

"What are you raving about, now?"

"At first I thought that I was truly sick," she started to wail, "that I got brainrot or something."

"You really are wasted." He commented with disdain, but she continued, completely ignoring his scorn. "So I went to the Temple, but the blessings did not work. It got worse."

"Indeed. Worse."

"Yes. Weak. Confused. Dizzy. Breathless. Like an invisible leash chocking my throat." She was calmer, and just hiccuped, but went on nonetheless, in a high-pitched whisper. "Like a curse. I thought it was you, a way to spite me, for what I said."

"I did not do such thing!" He commented outraged. "But of course you would blame me, I am the cause of all of your disgraces, right? You are inebriated, you stupid fool!"

"Yes, yes!" She whined. "I am always feeling like that. Inebriated. Help me. I don't recognize myself anymore."

He remained oddly mute and kept her pinned on the floor for some minutes, wearing a peculiar, nonplussed frown, while his gaze wandered over her head lost in thought, until a weird grunt finally left his throat, and his grip slackened around her wrists.

His shoulders slightly trembled and his lips pursed in a tight, tensed line, but the guttural snort that leaked from them, no matter how much he tried to stifle it, soon turned into a low chuckle. He was soon sitting on the floor, clutching his bent torso as he let out a rich, loud guffaw.

She sluggishly sat up too, throwing at him a confused glance. It was surreal, hearing Miraak laugh with such abandon.

"How... You..." He rasped hoarsely, while trying to catch his breath.

"How in Oblivion can you be so obtuse?" His expression visibly softened in a sly smirk and a strange glint appeared in his eyes. He was suddenly in an inexplicable better mood.

"Oh yes, little _dov, _I will help you." His voice resumed its suave, manipulative slow cadence, but a trace of laughter was nonetheless still perceivable in it. "I cannot deny such heartfelt pleas, after all."

If she had been more clear headed, she would have immediately be on the lookout, because something was clearly off, and, if she had been completely sober, she would have already screamed obscenities at him, for mocking so shamelessly her plight. Instead she just accepted his offered hand to stand up and sit again next to him on the bed.

"Akatosh is witness that I try." He murmured, with a soft, strange edge. And then he did something really odd, he gently lifted her hand to his lips and kissed its back. "But you were right." He added, as he pushed her down with him in the fur mattress. "I am a sick wretch." His warm breath tickled her nape, as he unfastened the laces. Then one arm slithered between the furs and the curve of her side, to encircle tightly her waist.

"Beyond cure." His hand slowly pulled down the shoulder strap, until the scoop neck of her loosened bodice could not hold up her exposed breasts anymore. She slightly curled up, only to feel his arm pushing her waist against his torso, and his heavy bulk adjust over hers, pressing her side against the pelts.

"This is all your fault." He whispered near her ear, in a mocking parody of a stern reprimand. His hand slid on her thigh and dragged the hem of the gown to the hip, eliciting a faint moan. "I always try to play nice." The arm clasping her waist slightly rose so that he could touch her breast, and her small hand clutched his gloved one, encouraging his gentle fondling.

"But you have to be such an unruly, little ninny." His lips rested on the curve of neck, and she arched it further, so that his lingering kiss would shift to a soft, possessive bite. "Spouting such idiocies." She heard the unclasping of his belt and shivered at its meaning.

"Yes, I should have coaxed your forgiveness from the start." He remarked, pressing his bare loins against her thighs, and the blood rushed like a scorching blaze in her cheeks. It was the first time she had ever heard him utter any form of apology, even the faintest. "But then, you would not be here," he growled darkly, as his arousal slowly slid between her soft, tightened legs, "pining like a little Argonian maid." The gloating dripping from his husky, unsubtle insinuation, should have pricked her touchy pride. Instead she only clamped her thighs even more, squeezing between their softness his familiar, welcomed intrusion, just to draw forth that cherished, guttural hum next to her ear. The same one that always made her skin shiver, and her heartbeat speed up in a startling, terrifying race.

He nibbled her earlobe in retaliation, to get a tiny, strangled whine, that soon became an erratic long moan, when his tongue teased the back of her ear. His hips pressed further against her back, and his large bulk slightly squashed her against the pelts at each new push.

He was trying to extort from her another, needy whimper, stroking her drenched lips with the alluring promise of his hardness, while slightly brushing her hidden, swollen spot with its tip.

She could not stop herself from letting a little, wanton moan escape, and snuggled up a little more, pressing her back against him, just to let it slide better. After gripping more tightly the gloved hand that fondled her breasts, she let her other hand wander down, so that her fingers could slightly rub the underside of his arousal, each time its tip reached them. Her tentative touch though, became a delicate, but pressing caress of her palm, after he released a guttural hum of appreciation. However, the same hand that firmly anchored her waist, quickly held back her wrist.

"Behave, or I won't last much." He growled as he raised her leg over his own, spreading her thighs with his knee.

"I will make sure," he added in a low drawl, as the tip of his cock parted her folds, "that you will always be this feverish." His words became hoarser, as he slowly sank further inside her embracing warmth. "Light-headed." And then his tone dropped even lower, to a husky purr, as if he was whispering to her a well-guarded secret. "Weakened." And the leathered palm that pressed her belly, slid down to rest over her soaked mound to rub it with teasing gentleness.

"I will intoxicate you over and over," he tried to add sinisterly, but traces of a stifled chuckle still rumbled in his throat, "if necessary." And he plunged hard, to stress its twisted meaning, and force a little cry out from her.

"But enough of this silliness." He continued with heavy condescension, as he resumed a milder rhythm, just to make her groan in frustration and flaunt who retained still some control. "You will call it by its proper name, from now on." Even with her flushing face pressed against the furs, she could still hear how his voice wavered, as he buried his nose deep in the crook of her neck, inhaling her scent.

"I am lovesick. Say it." He whispered just over her ear, kissing her cheekbone, and she trembled, as his fingers continued to ruthlessly stroke around her little, aching spot.

"Say it." And her breath hitched, when the leather of his glove scorched again her sensitized breasts, and his thumb slightly rubbed her nipple.

"And you will feel better." She clawed the pelt in desperation when he started to withdraw even slower, only to plunge again with more harshness. She was under siege.

"I promise you." He went on, and she whimpered louder, when it hit again that far away spot, he knew how to reach all too well. She couldn't choke a suffering high-pitched moan, when he resumed to pull out excruciatingly slowly, just to dive in with a sharp thrust. It was pure torture.

"So?" He hissed through gritted teeth, as if it was affecting him too. "When did you become such a coward?" And he sank harder, like he was ramming a fort.

"I'm..." She managed to squeak after his new assault. Her body was reduced to a quivering mess and she could not handle it anymore. She just capitulated. "I'm lovesick." It was a feeble whisper, interrupted by uneven intakes of breath, but he caught it nonetheless.

"Yes, that's my girl." He rasped in approval, and plunged fast and hard a few more times, so that her weakened limbs would finally crumble under the weight of a shattering burst, spreading fast from its core to just overwhelm her, relentless and piercing, like the erratic wail that left her lungs.

It did not matter anymore, she thought as she quivered in pleasure, she had already been losing it all in Apocrypha, after she read those poisonous Mara's pamphlets, or after she heedlessly indulged in seemingly innocuous fantasies of play pretend. And then, he had always known how too seize what he wanted, from the very beginning.

"Ah, if only..." She heard him grit in frustration, through her muffled haze. He pulled out and forced her to firmly shut again her thighs, so that he could reach his own pleasure between them. Now that she was a tiny bit more collected though, she grabbed his hand in a little spur of devious revenge, pulled away the glove and slid the tip of his index in her mouth, with a very clear intent.

"Next time," he grunted as he shoved with raw strength, crushing her against the furs, "I will put that little mouth of yours to good use." His threat however, did not sound very menacing, nor that feeble groan that left his throat, and so she could not refrain from letting out a giggle and tease him more. "And then I will suck it all, like the sweetest Honey Nut Treat." She whispered back brazenly, as she kissed the palm of his hand. It must have been lewder than she thought, because his weight suddenly shook, suddenly falling over her back, and a guttural, unrestrained groan resounded loud from the crook of her neck. The clamped split between her inner thighs became suddenly more sticky and warm, and then his bulk slowly lifted away, as he lazily pulled back and rolled to her side, to recover his uneven, heavy breathing.

"So... Did we make peace? Do w-" She turned her head, only for her next word to be stifled by a kiss.

"Mm. What do you think?" He purred after parting from her lips, and rolled her with delicate subtleness, caressing her hip to slightly part her thighs, so that he could peek, with dark appreciation, how his come lingered on her slippery folds.

She was going to demand some cuddling, when, without any forewarning, he rose and sat on the edge of the bed. "Where are you going?" She blinked perplexed, unable to smother a whine of disappointment, when he started fastening again his outer robes.

"I," his odd mellow voice wavered in an unusual way as he stood up, "need something to drink." He hesitated a moment, but then turned back and softly caressed her cheek. "You rest. Tomorrow we will resume our travel." And then he quickly left the room.

She stared dumbly at the closed door for some minutes, with a silly, contented smile in her face, basking in the afterglow of soothing appeasement. It was wonderfully dizzying how suddenly everything seemed to readjust itself, like magic! Perhaps she could still indulge in her little reveries, in the safety of her mind. Perhaps she could even dare to hope for some of them to come true. Perhaps... Her inner rambling was chopped from the root though, when a horrible thought struck her chest, like a jolt of lightning from a clear sky.

The amulet. She had to retrieve it in some way, before Miraak finally noticed, and really fast. She quickly lunged forward to reach her boots and put them on, as she bit her lip in apprehension.

* * *

**Dragon language:**

**Dovahkiin! Ahst laat hi rein! = Dragonborn! At last you roar! **

**Veyn lost hi kosaan? = Where have you been? **

**Krosis = sorry**

**Rot = words**

**geh, kung = yes, a lot**

**Drem Yol Lok = Greetings**

**mul = strength**

**Thu'um = Voice**

**Monahven = Throat of the World**

* * *

**Author's notes:**

**Writing drunken people is troublesome, there is a weird, but logical reasoning behind their dazed stupidity. This chapter was inspired by the quest 'A Night to Remember'. There's a reason that DB knows Sam Guevenne, but doesn't take his challenge. Lydia, like the dutiful Housecarl she is, never lets her drink, and for good reasons! About birth contraception, you will know about it together with the DB in the next chapter.**

**To Guest1: It is very difficult that Miraak would come 'clean', as you say. He hates to be out of control and the idea of being manipulated.**

**To Dovahkiin: Good, that's how it's done! Pity, my goody two-shoes thief chose to side with the Dawnguard.**

**To Violence is Always the Answer: sorry, but nope, not today... Make love, not war! (a Lennon's song plays in background)**

**To Guest2: This DB is really prideful, but has a flare for drama, like any diva *cough* I meant celebrated heroine. She is used to be treated like some special snowflake. You have to thank the Blades, the Greybeards, and Lydia for the attitude. Miraak's fixation just reinforced it, so she is very susceptible at everything that may brush her ego. And then she has the gall to criticize Miraak for the same defect, oh the irony.**

**To Trace: I love long reviews, that's the best part of fanfiction, sharing with readers point of views and opinions. Yeah, they end to be to docile, thus boring! I would like to share my opinion about your theory, but sadly I can't, because it would be spoiler! I will just say that Miraak feels like a novice in comparison to Mora's manipulations and the fear of being ****duped is always gnawing at him. He ended stuck in Apocrypha for six millenia, can you blame him?**

**To Meredith Sock: Oh, I think you are underestimating your abilities, I really loved your fic and the translation was good, so I'd say, if you have a plot-bunny go for it, one-shot or multi-chapter! Divines only know how much I'd like to read other versions of DB/Miraak. I am currently following the 'Hades and Persephone' fill in skyrimkinkmeme, but the more, the merrier!**

**To Yamato: Hi and thank you! I'm happy to hear you find the story entertaining so far!**

**To Sihayya: It is more like "So I'm ok for fun, but not for serious business?" in a context where Miraak is an emotional clam, gives roundabout answers, and she managed to have some control over him only through sex. So if seduction doesn't affect him anymore, and he avoids 'serious business', what is the DB to do? DB is a "I will deal with it when it happens" type, and that's exactly why she is in this mess.**

**Edit: thanks for the tip guest2, already corrected! **


	12. Eye

**12.**

**(Miin)**

**- Fredas, 23th of Mid Year -**

Her little plan had seemed flawless, as she crouched on the stairs to peek at the tables downstairs. Lady Luck had been for once at her side, because Miraak was indeed sitting in a corner with his back turned to the stairs, and more importantly, to the lateral entrance. The mission couldn't have been simpler, she just had to slip out, run to Madesi to get back the necklace, and then return before he finished his drink, to shamelessly feign a deep sleep. There was no way that she could have botched such a simple plan, right?

She slightly banged for the umpteenth time her forehead on the rough surface of the wall. Why, oh why, she had never followed any of her Housecarl's advices. Damned be the moment she had first tasted that cursed Black Briar mead.

No matter how much she had threatened or begged, that greedy snake of Madesi had refused to give her back the amulet. Now that she was completely sober and with a pounding headache, she really could not blame him though. Those empty promises of fetching for him sapphires and mammoth tusks were certainly not persuasive enough to give back a jewel bought for seven hundred-fifty gold.

It must have been the way she had pronounced 'sapphires' with not so unintended implications, yes, she was getting desperate enough to willingly suggest an underhanded deal, that must have induced the shrewd man to subtly accost her, when she had left the stand really dejected.

"That Madesi really is a hard nut to crack, eh?" he had suddenly said throwing at her his most winning smile. She had just blinked dumbly at him with slightly flushed cheeks, when she had lifted her head to look at him for the first time, straight into his playful eyes. The dark blonde, portly stranger had a really strange, alluring charm, that just made him approachable. And then he had continued, with a sudden conspiratorially whisper, maintaining though, with no effort, his previous congenial, and more importantly, unsuspecting attitude in front of the crowd. "However that could be easily arranged with some little right dose of persuasion, if you catch my drift."

The only thing she had caught at the time was that the attractive stranger could get back the amulet for her, and that had been incentive enough to immediately grab her interest. "I am listening."

"You see," the way he had slightly bent to whisper next to her ear, with cheeky familiarity, made her slightly uneasy, "that pesky Argonian is really attached to his grandmother's ring." He had remarked, with a sly smile. "He even keeps it locked in a box," and subtly had pointed his index to Madesi's stand, "to protect it from pick-pocketers during daytime."

His derisive chuckle should have been warning enough, but no, she had to accept one of his shady deals. "It is so old though, that even a child could break it open, with the good show I will put on."

"Wait, wait," she had whispered back alarmed, "I am no thief! I don't even know how to held a lockpick!" That had been the only brief moment, when her common sense had the wisdom to resurface back and knock some salt in her head.

"What a better chance then, to have some training on the field?" He swiftly had answered back smartly, displaying his most persuasive smile. "You want that amulet back, right?"

It had been the right thing to mention, and the scoundrel had known that. Just the word 'amulet' popped her timid common sense like an inconsistent soap bubble. "Of course! What a question."

"Then take his ring and slip it in the pocket of that merchant over there. Don't worry, your hands are tiny enough that he won't even notice once."

"And how is that supposed to get me my amulet?"

"It's very simple, when Brand-Shei gets caught by the guards, we use the ring for some old fashioned barter. You see, we have contacts, among the jailers."

The last phrase should have been a clear indication, that the conniving man was a member of the thief guild and thus had to be avoided like a rotten skeever, but his offer had sounded so tempting, so alluring, in its seemingly, linear simplicity. Yes, what a simple foolproof plan! For Brynjolf only, though.

She sighed and laid back on the dirty, unmade bed. There was no window to peek out, but she could sense from the chilling coldness that it was midnight. She had been duped like a fool. With foresight, it was clear like the summer sky, that she was supposed to be the true distraction, the scapegoat. It was still incredible how she had somehow managed to open the box and take Madesi's ring without being caught, that had to be what veterans liked to call the 'beginner's luck'. However it had not lasted much, and soon Brand-Shei high-pitched Elven screams, not only had beckoned all the attention on her, but also a rain of righteous blows from a swarm of guards.

She flinched as she slowly huddled up to retain a little bit of warmth, her back ached at the smallest movement. That backstabbing traitor of Brynjolf, instead of aiding her in her desperate attempt to flee, had seized her and feigned to help the guards, just to tear away from her fist Madesi's ring. The ring that she had supposedly pick-pocketed from Brand-Shei. Yes, that Dunmer had been framed too, and had been throwing at her homicidal stares from the opposite cell for the whole night, muttering what she could bet were obscenities in his native language.

She had so many hours to ponder on what had happened at the inn, and the more she mulled over it, the more flushed and resentful she became. That shameless wretch of Miraak. He had purposely taken advantage of her confused state to make her talk like a little, silly lark. First he had pried on her guarded weaknesses, and then, like it had not been humiliating enough, he had forced her to say such embarrassing things! How in Oblivion could she now look at him straight in the face? His warped ways of payback were just horrible and downright nasty. Surely, from now on, he would not waste a chance to slap it in her face at every possible occasion, flashing around that arrogant smirk of his. She grimaced at the mere prospect, as she hid her face under her crossed arms. Being caught completely wasted by him, how degrading.

Despite all of that resentment though, she wasn't able to ignore anymore that weird, constant, giddy glee, twirling in her chest. So the bastard had also shamelessly lied through his teeth. You would feel better, he had said, and instead it got more frenzied, worse than she could have ever imagined. Now that it was out in the open and impossible to swallow back, the damn _thing_ just refused to sink down and quietly macerate in the farthest recess of her mind. For a moment she contemplated the absurd possibility of pretending a convenient and very selective loss of memory, after all the guards had not been thrifty in their beating. Pity that she had always been a disaster at acting, and Miraak was not a tiny bit stupid.

Until then its unsettling rustle could be easily squashed by distracting thoughts, but now, no matter how much she tried, it just resurfaced to flood her common sense, expanding slowly and inexorable, to engulf one by one all of her thoughts, until her lungs were completely crushed by its weight.

Her heart skipped a bit. No, no, absolutely not! She was not ready to drown like this, she could not! She abruptly sat down and slapped her flushed face. She had to immediately stop fostering the thing further with such inconvenient brooding. It was difficult however, while cooped up in a stinky, humid prison.

It was then, as she tried to recompose herself, that one of the guards quickly walked in front of her cell and with a turn of a rusty key, opened its door. "Well, thief rat, it seems some idiot thought to bail you out." He sneered and rudely pulled her out, dragging her through the stairs until he left her in front of the main entrance of Riften Jail, shutting the gate behind her back with a loud clang.

It was like she thought, from the position of the two full moons, it was past midnight. The night air was even more humid, and a blow of chilly breeze, made her exposed arms slightly shudder with goosebumps. Or it was the sight of Miraak leaning still on the wall, few feet from her.

The knot in the stomach returned again, but this time she recognized it for what it was, foreboding. She had felt once the same overwhelming urge to flee, when Odahviing left her in Skuldafn, to fight for the first time, completely alone, dozens of draugr deathlords and ancient dragons. He was like Alduin though, unavoidable. As if that wasn't troublesome enough, she itched with the sudden need to punch and scream at him for what he had done. If only he had not become her constant, unmovable anchor. When he had shifted to that role she didn't remember anymore. Why then she craved at the very same time to leap on him and squeeze his breath away with a thankful, possessive hug, and smother him with kisses, well, that was just incoherent. She did not dare to even utter a faint greeting however, not after observing the tense way his arms were folded or how he refused to cross her stare, in a straight, rigid posture.

"Come." Only a faint word, sharp and cold like the night breeze, left his unreadable golden mask, but it was enough for her attuned senses. She snuggled her bare arms, and followed him with a grim face. He was so livid. He uttered nothing else for the whole journey to the inn, it was not in his nature to make a scene in a public place, like she would have done with no qualms, had their roles been reversed. Nonetheless, the dreaded moment he shut the door of their room occurred too soon and she braced herself for the incoming tirade.

"Are you testing my patience Dragonborn?" He hissed in barely contained rage. It was a rhetoric question and she wasn't so stupid to talk back, at least not then. It was never a good sign, when he addressed her as Dragonborn like that. "I leave you alone for one moment." He started pacing around the little room. "One moment." His voice was gradually rising. "And you end up in jail." He was shouting now. "In jail!" She remained strategically meek, and let him freely rant.

"Do you have even the slightest idea," and he stopped in front of her to bellow hoarsely in her face, "how much time I wasted looking around, like a complete fool?" And then his voice suddenly dropped to that initial menacing, low hiss, as he slightly bent towards her and grabbed her shoulders. "Explain. Now."

Her grimace and abrupt flinch must have been quite noticeable, because he immediately let his grip, as if burnt. "What did they do to you?" He then asked suspiciously, with a strange dark undercurrent that let her puzzled.

"Eh, nothing." She tried to minimize with a wave of her hand. The last thing she wanted him to fixate on was the true reason she had gotten so many beatings. "Just the usual law enforcement show. They just do it to impress the people." It was not convincing enough though, because he forced her to turn around. "Let me see." He ordered tersely.

"Ouch. Be careful with that prodding, for Mara's sake!"

"Be quiet, I am not even touching you yet." He gritted as he quickly loosened the dress and examined her back. And then, without any warning, he rudely pushed her to lay down on the bed, as the familiar buzz of a Restoration spell resounded in the air.

"This is getting annoyingly frequent," he grunted peeved, "you should really study some basic notions of Restoration."

"You know I find it boring." Not to say that she lacked the necessary concentration. One had to wonder how she managed to learn those few bits of Destruction magic. "And why should I," she then added as an afterthought, "when you already do it much better?"

"So am I burdened to play nurse, now?" She must have said something right, because he chided her in a slightly better mood. "Knowing you," he went on with a touch of grumpy jesting, "just the fact that you defeated Alduin and remained in one piece is indeed a feat per se."

"You should have seen how many health potions I carried with me in Sovengarde. I could have opened an Alchemy shop." She snorted at the absurd notion. "Isn't it fantastic? Now that I have you, I will save lots of gold." In some way, her mild quip made him slightly chuckle.

"How charming of you." He commented in a low purr, any trace of anger mysteriously gone, and just that change alone made that weird giddiness resurface back. "And studying Alchemy, of course, never crossed your mind, right?"

"Are you mad?" She let a silly giggle escape. "Eating those slimy, icky daedra's hearts in the name of science? Just the idea is... gross! I wonder why so many mages waste their time with it, when they already study all the other schools."

"It has its uses." He answered vaguely, in a slow, deep voice.

"Oh really?" She questioned lazily, his soothing cadence was already having an effect. "And how is it then, that you know so little of it?"

"Did you see any plant in Apocrypha by chance?" Well, yes, that explained a lot. "There, done." He remarked, with a pat on her restored back. "Now sleep." He ordered as he stood up to change in a more comfy sleeping attire. So she somehow managed to overcome the storm unscathed, and avoid to bring forth the thorny necklace issue. She stretched satisfied as she observed how he rummaged the nearby chest, and silently congratulated herself, it seemed that she was getting better at avoiding trouble. For some reason however, she couldn't tear away her attention from what he was doing.

It was strange, she mused then, as she continued to follow his movements, how she had never really noticed before, even if it had always been there to see. How despite his size and his heavy bulk, his terse motions carried a natural predatory grace, that however could not conceal the raw strength coursing through them.

She frowned and sprawled even more sluggishly on the bed, still looking at him intently. He finally picked a dark grey shirt and some black trousers, and turned over to put them over the drawer, so that he could pull off his mask and his outer robes.

He was really tired, it was so obvious from the way his angular, large jawline was tensed. She took her time to detail his aquiline nose and high cheekbones. His facial features wore an austerity and a coarse sharpness, that was typical of battle-scarred Nords beyond the prime of his years. Nonetheless, those same average Nordic traits that shouldn't catch any particular attention, suited his expression in a way that was strangely, yet inexplicably alluring, especially when they framed his inquisitive, but guarded gaze.

He rested his gloves and belt on a nearby chair and started to unfasten the hidden clasps of his collar, quickly descending to his torso, until all of them were loose and his bare, hairy chest was visible. He quickly discarded the cloth on the chair and slightly bent to take away his blue trousers. She couldn't help, but wonder how his muscles could be so enhanced and toned, despite the fact that he was a scholar of the arcane arts. He was not a man one would define attractive, and yet... She unconsciously nibbled her lip.

"Is there something you have to tell me?" He suddenly asked, breaking her little reverie.

"Uh?" She uttered dumbly, blinking a bit.

"You keep staring." He said matter-of-factly.

"Ah. Well, eh..." She could have invented something phony on the spot, but she just wanted to avoid another stupid quarrel over nothing, so she just blurted out her thought. "You really are fit."

He abruptly turned away to wear the other trousers, but not fast enough to hide from her inspecting eyes a slight, traitorous blush. "It is to be expected," he grumbled, trying to conceal an odd discomfort, that however did not escape her attentive ears, "after many years of sword training."

"Are you purposely doing the contrary of what I tell you to do?" He then added gruffly, a clear attempt to deviate from the topic, but she noticed nonetheless that he did not put on the linen shirt he had chose before. She threw at him a cheeky smile. "Perhaps."

That only earned a half-hearted scowl, as he blew out the feeble fire of the lamplight. "Scoot. Under the pelts, now." He rumbled in the dark, and then a light shove from a large mass pushed her to the side making her squeak. It was thus only fair, to roll around and threw her weight over his side, just to get back a disconcerted grunt. She slightly tapped her fingers against his side, as she rested absent-mindedly her head over his chest. No way that she could fall asleep, after all the ruminations she had done during her brief stay in jail. There were so many questions that danced wildly in her mind, and knowing him he surely had some answers.

"Are you sleeping?"

"Obviously not."

"We are going to Whiterun, right?"

"Yes. Now hush."

"You have plans, right?" She heard a heavy sigh, but went on nonetheless. "You always have." She murmured, while brushing with a finger a slight depression near his side. "Why don't you tell me?" It was one of his abs. "Now?" Came a grumpy rumble from his chest. The slight movement of her head was enough to get another longer sigh.

"Well," he started, but then stopped as if he was pondering how to continue. She just silently waited, while slowly tracing the next muscle. He could take all the time he needed, as long as he talked to her. "I had some," he finally revealed in a low whisper, "but I deem wiser to probe the current political climate first." Political? She frowned nonplussed. And as usual, his answers had to come out cryptic and obscure. Or perhaps it was just his fancy way to tell her ha had no idea. She smiled, as her finger reached his navel, perhaps it was time to suggest some of her own ideas, like living together in _Breezehome_. She was going to start, when she heard an annoyed grunt.

"Stop it."

"What?"

"You know very well what."

"Can't I even touch now?"

"Not that way!" He abruptly barked.

"Why?" And she puffed. "It's not like I am trying anything." She was not stupid, and also well aware that he was too weary for anything, at least, in the controlled, stiffly way he wanted. However, from the way he snorted at her prompt comeback and the way he strangely shifted under the pelts, she quickly connected the dots.

"Oh. Sorry, I did not mean to." She uttered slightly chagrined. "Of course you did not." He hissed resentfully, like implying some kind of conspiracy against him. And was that smothered embarrassment she had just heard?

"Well, well, well." Luckily he could not see her wide grin, or he would have gotten all ruffled up. "Are you really so susceptible?" She teased, as her fingers slowly slid down to lazily brush his abdomen. "I said stop it, you bothersome nuisance." He grunted almost resigned, because when had she ever listened to him. "Are you pretty, pretty sure?" She taunted, as her fingers finally encircled something quite thick and warm. "I doubt it will let you sleep like that." She commented as her slow fondling made it grew thicker. An exasperated groan reached her ears. "You should have told me, you idiot." "And I told you to stop it!" He hissed back. She was slightly piqued by his foiled attempt at secrecy, but she could not blame him though, because she knew very well what was worrying him.

"Don't talk like I'm molesting you!" Her voice came out feeble and muffled, as she scuttled down the pelts. "I am helping here, in case you haven't noticed yet." Well, there was always a first time for everything. "What are you doing?" A distressed growl came from afar, but he did not need further explanations, when she started to provide her own peculiar assistance, in a way she had never done before. Until then, it had never been to give him respite, oh no, it was always a way to tease, get back at him, or grate his ego slapping some warped kind of control straight in his face. This time though...

She was so tired of skirmishes and power games, play pretend and half-truths, she wanted them to finally quit it all, once and forever, and just be clear to each other. However she was also well aware that it wasn't in his nature to discover all of his cards first. That frightful burden rested on her shoulders too, as usual.

He seemed to have perceived her change of attitude, from the way her dedicated lips were unusually merciful and affectionate. Instead of putting up a stoic composure, and overpower her when his farce began to crumble, he just let himself relax under her ministrations, grumbling unintelligible half-ended sentences in Dovahzul, until his hips buckled and he let out a loud hoarse groan. He was certainly not sweeter than honey, but she had kept her promise until the very end, draining from him even his very breath. When his swelling receded to his previous slumber, she crawled again to rest next to his side. A small smile crossed her lips when she heard his deep, slow breathing. He must have been really tired, because he was already fast asleep.

It was in that exact moment, when she rested her head on his shoulder, that the disconnected pieces of her previous, confused goals suddenly scrambled and readjusted to form a clear, unequivocal picture. When she closed her eyes, she had already assimilated a renewed, completely different, pigheaded determination, that would have intimidated even the mightiest of dragons.

Next morning she was in an unexplainable stellar mood. He must have thought it was too good to be true, and that she certainly was already up too something, which, by the way, was absolutely spot on. Not that she was trying to hide anything, of course, but from the way he walked warily around her, and threw from time to time, brief suspicious looks at her turned side, he was obviously thinking the contrary. So he was slightly on edge, eh? Well, he now had all the time to get used to it, her mind cackled maliciously, as they sat on a table to eat breakfast.

When he started to cut in tiny pieces the fried eggs and roll the bacon slices around his fork, never curving once his straight back, she almost snorted on her warm milk, risking to make an horrible mess, that his proper table manners would have surely not appreciated a bit. They were in a tavern, for Azura, not certainly in the Blue Palace. She rolled her eyes behind her mug, and he must have noticed, because he raised a questioning eyebrow at her. That alone spurred her to flash at him a wide, forward grin that was not reassuring at all, while she eyed with unconcealed greed the pickles he put apart.

"So, are you going to eat them?" She did not give him even the time to nod, that she had already stabbed his pickle with her fork and chewed it down. His mild, reproachful frown did not deter her from stealing the next one.

"I was wondering," she went on playfully, with a devious glint that put him on guard, "when are you going to teach me dirty talk in Dovahzul?". His knife slipped from his grip and scraped the plate, producing an ugly, metallic screech. She bit her lip and tried to maintain a straight face, while spreading some butter in a slice of bread. Messing with him was proving to be too much fun.

"And why should I ever impart such questionable knowledge?" He pronounced slowly and very cautiously, throwing at her a very guarded look. Good wording, she internally snickered, but not apt enough to shield him, this time.

"Well," she drawled with feigned disinterest, "You know, the usual. Taunting dragons to fly down would be very useful," his posture visible relaxed, "just Odahviing's shocked face would be priceless," she purposely waited for him to drink his spiced wine, "and I'm really curious to know what you were saying last night. Can you translate, please?" He literally chocked in his drink and she couldn't help but shamelessly laugh in his face as he coughed, until tears were rolling from her eyes and she too needed to catch her breath. Her glee was abruptly cut though, when he banged his napkin against the table and she saw his red, furious face contorted in an ugly snarl. She did not have time to utter a word of feeble excuse, that he had already stood up and marched like a fury out of the inn. She immediately ran out too, and quickly seized his arm.

"Leave me, now!" He roared, trying to wiggle out of her hold, but she squeezed tighter.

"Come on, don't get angry!" She hat to resort to undignified pouting, but it was quickly working, so she kept it up. "It was just in jest! Please?" He was still ruffled up like an offended Jarl, but was nonetheless calming down. "I won't be made a fool!" He hissed with pure rancour.

"You do it all the time to me! It is only fair to get some of it back."

"Be assured that I won't stand for it. I will retaliate back!" There was a touch of spiteful threat in his warning, it was so predictable from him, but it did not upset her a bit. So instead she threw a disarming, wide grin, that took him aback. "And I will pay you back. That's half the fun of it."

"Oh, I see." He commented suddenly mollified, like he had finally grasped some hidden perspective of the situation, that she hadn't caught yet. She would bet anything that he just did that to irk her. "So that's how my little _dov_ likes to play. Very well." He purred as he slightly tapped up her chin. He subtly ascertained with one guarded glance that they were for the moment alone, and then slightly bent to give a slow, sensual peck on her lips. From his crooked, arrogant smirk it was obviously aimed to tease. Great, she thought, still blushing and feeling like a complete fool, he was already retaliating in the worst form. "Come," he then added like nothing happened, while putting on his mask, "we still have to do some purchases."

Half hour later, one could hear a high-pitched scream, coming from Balimund's blacksmithing.

"You said you would provide. Then provide!" A little Breton could be seen flailing her arm to point towards a set of steel armour carefully laid over the workbench.

"Don't be a stubborn ninny!" The other, much taller, masked man could be heard hissing through his teeth. "Price-wise, the ebony armour costs less and gives more protection." Balimund was nowhere to be seen, the moment he smelled trouble he dumped the purchasers to his poor assistant Asbjorn, that did not know what to do anymore, but meekly wait in a corner.

"No discussions Miraak, it is the 'Radiant Raiment' model or nothing!" The masked figure visibly bristled in front of such sharp ultimatum, and from his stiffened posture it seemed that he was going to reply with something equally nasty, until he had a last moment change of mind, and brusquely dropped his gold pouch in the counter, in front of a very relieved Asbjorn. He was finally going to get rid of them, in just a matter of minutes, when that annoying Breton finished to change outfit and left their shop.

To say that Miraak was irked after the payment, was an understatement. He kept seething alone few feet from her, grumbling softly to himself, but not quietly or far enough from her ears to catch something. "... Even a courtesan is less expensive! " "What did you say?" She squawked indignant, but he had the decency to keep quiet, so she graciously let it go, especially because she was going to ask for more gold. "And what for?" He asked outraged, but she remained impassible. "Ladies toiletries, so cough it up." She said, showing meaningfully her empty palm.

She hummed satisfied as she walked alone towards _'Elgrim's Elixirs'_, if there was one thing she learnt fast at the Bruma orphanage, it was that no men had enough guts or interest to ever discuss that fascinating topic. Not even that miser of a pot-bellied caregiver had ever questioned her once, about why her monthly visit came so conveniently fast, especially when the confectioner baked a new cake recipe.

Luckily, it wasn't the old grumpy Elgrim attending the counter, but a new young woman, that at first sight seemed quite a nice lady, thus facilitating her little plan. Or so she thought.

"Well," She cleared her throat, pulling off her best nonchalance, "I need some soaps, a hair lotion, a dragon tongue perfume, tampons, some health and stamina potions," but then her voice faltered, "and also something against pregnancy." She muttered the last part too swiftly, stumbling on the word, like she was confessing some big State secret to an enemy spy. She internally groaned, with nonchalance, yes.

Ingun Black-Briar just sighed, visibly rolled her eyes, and abruptly moved towards a drawer to get some products. "Great. Another virgin. All-right then." "What? I...! No!" She cringed at her own squeaking, her cheeks burning up in distress. This was getting more and more embarrassing by the minute. "I just need some further information, that's all!" She managed to rasp outraged, but Ingun did not seem persuaded or impressed at all.

"Those from the fields always say that. Don't worry dearie, that's why I am here." She commented, while placing a lot of coloured bottles of different sizes in the counter. "And there's nothing to be ashamed. People... wait, for some reason. Even at your age." It was more like she was following a rehearsed script imposed from Elgrim, than showing actual conviction or real sympathy.

"Now listen well, because I hate repeating it all the time." She went on business-like, any trace of fake understanding completely gone. "We have the douches," and she pointed to some white bottles to the left, "the contraceptives," those were orange, "and then the abortifacients." They were all purple, thus some kind of poison.

"All that stuff you heard from your peers," Ingun continued with scorn, "amulets, prayers, weird rituals with a chicken in your head, well, they are wrong. Complete bollocks." She couldn't help but laugh at the image, and Ingun nodded solemnly. "Yes. There are still idiots that believe it works, and then run here to buy a last minute remedy." She remarked slightly shaking a purple bottle.

"So use the white an hour before intercourse and drink the orange each morning before breakfast. The purple only in case the menses skip a month." The redhead just nodded, as she watched Ingun put all the potions she mentioned in a small bag. "That's it all, on sure ground for just three hundred gold. Ah yes, unless your stud uses magicka." That made her frown nonplussed.

"Eh? And what has that to do with anything?"

"Everybody knows that magicka tampers with the final effects. Where do you live girl?" Her face must have been expressive enough, because Ingun thought wiser to clarify, after a little snort of impatience. "Each ingredient needs to be perfectly balanced to fit each magicka signature. In that case I will need a blood sample for the testing and a week." Well, that explained why all mages studied Alchemy. Damn, if that complicated things, she too had developed a bit of magicka.

"So there is no solution at all?" She asked hopeful. Just the idea of opening an Alchemy book or dissect Skeever tails made her stomach churn. "Well, yes..." Ingun's frown did not promise much though. "As poisons can't be too virulent... There's what I call the 'granny way', but... it's a last resort, a bit unorthodox, and you should go to Haelga for that."

From the way Ingun fidgeted, it was clear that the topic was a delicate one, and that it was better to leave it untouched, but she had always been too curious for her own good. "What do you mean?" This time it was the older woman that whispered in a conspiratorial way, after a resigned sigh. "An embalming needle, lots of linen strips, and mead, for the pain."

The blood drained from her face as she flinched back like burned, but Ingun forcefully grabbed one of her arms and pulled her even nearer to the counter. "Don't tell Maramal anything about that! Is that clear?" She hissed very worried, already regretting her little disclosure. "He is already unbearable at the Inn, with his campaign against alcohol. What Haelga does has saved many girls from being repudiated by their village, so keep your mouth shut!" She couldn't do anything, but nod dumbly and leave the shop quietly with her purchases, still unsettled by the little chat. She would have never imagined that stopping an unwanted pregnancy could be so brutal. She really had believed that one could just buy a potion for everything.

She did not have the chance to further ponder on it, because her attention was quickly caught by a familiar scoundrel passing nearby. "You!" She hissed furious. Brynjolf had the decency to look slightly abashed, but did not stop his fast march towards a plain, rusted door. "I'd like to chat with you, but I prefer to find some shelter and fast." He looked at her for a moment and added with a strange tone, without shutting the door. "I'm sorry gal, you have potential. I would invite you to the Ragged Flagon, if not for your man."

She blinked confused as she walked around the planks, what was that rogue prattling about, and was he talking about Miraak? She shook her head, that lousy thief was surely mixing her up with someone else, or just messing around again. It was only after she climbed the stairs and stepped in the marketplace, that Brynjolf's choice to hide in the Ratway tunnels finally made fully sense.

The pale, irregular tiled floor of the little square was oozing with dark, viscous blood, and mutilated corpses were left abandoned there, exposed to the humid weather. She observed their soiled uniforms, they were all Riften soldiers on duty and one armoured civilian. Even if she was used to the ruthless violence of battlefields, she couldn't refrain from slightly gasp at the gruesome sight of half carbonized bodies and entrails scattered around. Riften was supposed to be a safe place, not even a dragon attack killed so many men at once, and with such ferocity. She unsheathed her sword, ready for any sudden assault. It was a very bad sign how no one dared to come out to clean the place or just cover the corpses.

She spotted Miraak far away, in a secondary street, and ran to him. "What is happening?" She cried alarmed, but he remained silent, and just handed a crumpled, bloodied note to her.

"_As instructed, you are to eliminate __Bree__ by any means necessary. __The Black Sacramen__t __has been performed - somebody wants this poor fool dead. __We've already received payment for the contract. Failure is not an option. - __Astrid"_

"How," she uttered flabbergasted, "How is it possible? I've just been in Nirn for less than a week." She raised her gaze from the letter and stared at his robe stained with some curdled blood. So he had been fighting too. "How many were they?" From the number of fallen soldiers, it should have been at least a group of fifteen hired assassins. Whoever wanted her dead had to be filthy rich.

"We must go." He instead said with a deadpan voice, gently pulling her wrist towards the main gate. The streets were completely deserted, and the only living being around, a beggar huddled in a corner, screamed in fright and ran away the moment they crossed her sight. That alone gave her a really bad feeling.

"Miraak," she murmured this time with slight dread, "What did happen there?" They were marching on the main road, already out of the city.

"Their covert agent tried an ambush and I killed him with one blow." He recounted with a chilling, flat tone. "The guards however mistook me for the assaulter. He was camouflaged in civilian clothes."

She closed her eyes to digest what she didn't want to suspect. That carnage, it had been him.

"You could have used _Gol-Hah_," She uttered dismayed, "you could have paralysed them!" Her shrilly tone was now full of reproach.

"Those swine deserved to die!" He suddenly shouted with a savage rancour that bewildered her. "You did not see," he then added with an eerie calm, "the mangled mess they left in your back."

It was then that she realized, for the first time, with full force, how her rash, careless actions, directly influenced his meticulously premeditated ones. She stared with wide eyes at the inexpressive profile of his mask, as they proceeded in uncomfortable silence.

Miraak was a gigantic, walking danger. A menace that could unleash at any moment, the same havoc of an unstoppable cyclone. Like a deceptive pillar of recurring, controlled motion, that in truth overwhelmed everything near its unpredictable path, with unchained and destructive force.

She had managed though, in some unfathomable way, to remain safely trapped inside the lulling quietness of its eye. Nobody had ever crossed a cyclone and remained unscathed, and yet there she was, currently inside one, with the untapped possibility of conditioning its course.

She blinked at the astonishing thought. It was, like everything that concerned him, too overwhelming to digest at once. They walked side by side until dusk, without uttering a single word. By then, the amulet was just a forgotten memory.

* * *

**Author's notes:**

**It seems that next week I will have to do night shifts, oh yeah. That means updates may become slower for obvious reasons (me sleeping on the keyboard, for example). I will write a bit everyday like usual, so there should not be many problems.**

** FoAteAZombie: Hi! **

** Guest2: I love Sam Guevenne too. Yes, that's my justification on why all the DBs I reroll become kleptomaniac self-serving bastards. It's not because I'm a lazy player, ok? I never played warrior classes exactly because of that, I'm horrible at melee targeting. I facepalmed at the error, that's me revising at ungodly hours of the night.**

** Kira3145: Thank you!**

** Trace: I try to post regularly, but then life gets in the way... I'd like to say I am such a great Master of the Voice, but no, I use google translator, or to be more precise Thuum.o r g . Wonderful site, the most complete on the topic I've ever found (Edit: this site and its link censorship... Noticed the link magically disappeared after reading your comment lol) .**

** Meredith Sock: Glad to see I am not the only owl here! Those fanfictions, always stealing my precious sleep... Thank you, as usual, you are very kind.**

** Sihayya: Thank you for the bookmark! The town attacking you? Normal DB day! That's why Jarls are rich.**

** New Reader: But-but the Sanguine Rose is awesome! Vinthuuruth is a dragon that spawns near Windhelm, and ops, yes, I forgot to add them. I will write them down soon.**

** Violence Is always The Answer: Can't have violence all the time, you know, plot advancement is a strict mistress!**


	13. Tempest - Loredas, 24th, Tibedetha Day

**13.**

**(Kest)**

**- Loredas, 24th of Mid Year: Tibedetha -**

The entrance door creaked, but the young woman, sitting in front of the hearth-fire, did not tear away her stare from the steamy mug in her hand. Only one person had a duplicate key of _Breezehome_, and cared enough to brave the raging storm outside.

"I thought to bring you some fresh fruit, my Thane." A delicate, yet decisive voice reached her ears from the doorstep, and so, a faint, dour smile curved her lips. "You don't have to call me like that anymore, Lydia." The older woman just laid the basket on the small table in the corner, and then turned to face her sombrely. "I still have to repay you in some way." Chagrin still coursed strong in her reminder, no matter how much time had already passed.

"We've already been through that, it was not your fault." The redhead uttered wearily, her gaze lost into the opaque reflections of her drink. "I know very well, what it means to be manipulated." She murmured softly, almost imperceptible.

Lydia's sharp eyes immediately noticed the cursed, thick Black Book on the floor, near the side of Bree's chair, and so rushed to sat next to her, softly squeezing the hand resting on her lap. "Please, I beg of you, lock it away, stop reading it. It is not healthy."

The younger woman slightly shook her head. "No. I must not forget." Her gloomy whisper acquired that familiar sharp edge, always present when they touched that topic. "Not even for a moment." A foreign coldness that Lydia still found hard to believe, it came from her. "What he has done." She then added, almost as an afterthought. Lydia's tense lips, became even more drawn. That fiend's lingering poison coursed more deeply than one could notice at first sight. Her hunch had been right, it had been a wise decision to stop at _Breezehome _and check on her. It was the eve of that day, the night when her naive friend had made a misjudgement she was still regretting and paying for.

"I can still remember all so clearly, as if it were yesterday." She added softly, before losing herself again in her thoughts.

Miraak had given her no warning, nor had asked for her opinion at all, and just that should have been grating enough to bark at him something nasty.

"Stay behind." He had dared to order, abruptly halting her march with a stretched arm in front of her chest, while he swiftly extinguished the life detection spell dispersing from his hand. He had not even given her any explanation, nor any chance to question his decision. That alone would have been once a sufficient reason to get furious at him.

"_Mul-Qah-Div!" _His shout then broke the eerie silence of the twilight. He unsheathed his Daedric sword and charged to an unknown location on the far side of the road, towards Cragslane Cavern.

"What...?" She instead just blinked bewildered, staring at his distancing shape. "Wait!" He left her no choice, but to run after him, puzzled and quite worried, instead of the righteous fury that should have been in its place. He was always leaving her in that state, guessing around in the dark like a fool. When she finally spotted him though, he had already engaged in fight four bandits and killed two.

She just sighed and stood there, not even resting her hand on the hilt of her sheathed sword, because from what she could see, there was really no need. Miraak had already plunged his blade straight on the stomach of another bandit with his usual lethal precision, and easily turned to parry a predictable attack behind his back, while dodging a slash to his side. She crossed her arms, impatiently waiting for him to deliver the final strikes.

It should have been a matter of seconds, the technique of those three was terribly unpolished and their offensive stances left too many easy openings to exploit, and yet Miraak was still parrying and dodging their lunges, purposely postponing the inevitable.

She frowned even more confused, and observed, for a brief moment unknowingly entranced, how he easily kept toying with them, gracefully moving aside from their lethal blows. She bit her lip, unable to stop her growing fidgeting. What in Oblivion was he waiting for, to finally get that Orc's two-handed mace smashed in his head?

"Miraak, cut it out!" She screeched, her mounting distress clearly audible. Couldn't he see how foolhardy and dangerous was his stupid game? Just one slight distraction from his part and he could easily get stabbed in the abdomen by those Khajit's swirling daggers! However that cocky idiot, instead of quitting it, just laughed loudly and continued with his stupid stunt, even more recklessly than before. She gritted her teeth, from the way he closely stepped around those bandits, she was well aware of what that idiot had in mind, he was trying to lure them into accidentally hit their companions to death. When he barely avoided a jab however, just a brush away from his chest, the unexpected jolt of fright had been too vicious, and her heart just skipped a beat. It did not matter anymore then, that he could heal himself or that he was clearly stronger than them, she decided to put an end to that ridiculous farce.

The very moment she unsheathed her swords though, Miraak, as if on cue, abruptly charged forward, and slain them all in three swift sequential lunges. He must have mistaken her dumbfounded expression for awe, because he pranced towards her with such self-assured demeanour, that should have irked her to no end. Or at least produced a malicious jab out of her spiteful mouth. Instead she just stood there arms folded, throwing at him one of her most crossed glares like a reproachful old spouse, as he stopped just few inches from her side.

"Did you enjoy the show, Dragonborn?" He insinuated smugly, slightly inclining his head, so that his low, teasing purr could resound even clearer next to her ear. He purposely brushed her arm before moving forward, to settle in the cleared bandit camp.

A long time ago, that sudden flush that burned up her face would have been of pure rage. That arrogant imbecile! So he had staged all of that silly travesty just to show off in front of her. Her past self would have taken it as another of his countless, shameless provocations, and then proudly raised to the challenge. This time however, it just intensified the unwelcome, out of place warmness in her cheeks.

When, she wondered slightly frightened, when had all of those annoying defects, like his unbearable conceitedness or his bothersome domineering attitude, started to become so endearing? Or even worse, charming. She cringed at the inescapable admission. There was no way to dance around it, she truly was in trouble this time. She had it bad. Terrifyingly bad. She slightly shook her head and waited for the blush to recede, so that she could finally join him in the camp with some dignified composure. It had deteriorated, even more than she could have ever imagined. The worst part though, was that Miraak seemed to be in some way aware of that too.

Her besotted daze however, was washed away the very moment he carelessly threw a shock spell against one of the fresh corpses to incinerate it. That simple act had the same impact of a sudden cold, pouring rain during a winter night, bringing back all the depressing mulling she had done during their quiet trip.

He had carbonized with that same flicker of magicka the limbs of so many innocent soldiers, without any kind of scruple. Men that were just doing what was their duty, protect their home and earn a daily pay to feed their families and children. Widows that were now grieving suddenly lost, bereft of any support, and orphans that would soon be dropped without any concern in some kind of institution, just like she had been once.

Just the idea alone formed a knot in her throat. What he had done was just horrible, unjustifiable. And yet... Her traitorous heart fluttered wildly at the mere thought of why he had done it. Perhaps it would not have happened anymore, after all he had been attacked first. It had been mainly self-defence. However he was strong enough, he could have just incapacitated them. They were so many though. And then it was because she had made one of her messes, as usual. If she had just staid out of trouble... And then if she explained to him why it bothered her so much, he would surely refrain from doing that again. Maybe she could just let it go for once... No. Absolutely not. No matter how many plausible justifications she could find, there was only one right course of action to follow.

"We are going back to Riften."

Despite the determined posture and the grim frown she put up, her voice wavered, and the Dwarven sword pointed straight to his chest slightly trembled. Miraak just snorted and moved away the blade with a soft push of his fingers.

"Really, Bree." His low, mocking tone was completely unapologetic. "You do not even sound convincing to yourself." He approached her, until they were again just few inches away from each other. "And pray tell," he was calm, completely at ease, even though her sword lingered just inches from his side, "what should I do there? Pay a fee? Let them cut my throat?" His voice lowered to an intimate, velvety murmur. "Do you really want them to do that to me?" His hand slowly caressed her forearm, until it rested over the grip that held the sword. The hilt slowly slipped from her loosened grasp and fell on the ground.

"N-No, but..." She whispered, her little resolve completely vanished. "I broke the law. They were in their right!" His hand slightly tightened around hers.  
"Is that so?" He continued in that slow, persuasive cadence of his, his mask hovering next to her cheek. "Do you really consider that amount of abuse fitting for such petty crime? Mm?" His soft, smooth murmur was entrancing enough to mix up again all of her already tangled feelings.  
"However... There was no need to react so..." A statement that should have been shouted with righteous vehemence, came out instead shy and breathy. "Why... Why did you do that?" Her voice shook with trepidation. She indeed was truly, completely smitten. Beyond help.  
"You already know why." His hoarse, forceful whisper came out strangled. "I..." He abruptly pulled away and walked agitated few feet far from her, like he was trying to collect himself. His fists were tightly clenched, when he turned to face her again. "Hermaeus Mora is laughing at us, you know!" He suddenly spat, full of festered resentment. He then sat on a wooden stool near the fire, returning to that same contemplative, brooding mood he had kept on for the whole travel.

The flames crackled undisturbed for some more minutes, until he resumed again with more venom, stressing each word. "Don't you see, foolish girl? This is why he let us go. This is exactly what he wants. What he had planned from the very beginning!"

She sank her hands in her dishevelled mane in exasperation. She knew what was coming next, he was going to rant again about fate, and she had already heard enough about that to last for a lifetime, in Apocrypha. Sithis and damnation! She couldn't put up with that annoyance anymore, especially now, when it was messing with her new, revised goals.

"It is you instead!" She suddenly shouted, marching angrily towards him. "Blind like a Moth Priest, you still don't get it, none at all!" She gave him no chance to retort her statement, but straddled him and furiously shook the hem of his collar with both hands, as if that could, in some way, push inside his skull some grain of common sense.

"You can't live second guessing their moves all the time!" She screamed, unable to hold back her temper. "In that way you are nonetheless letting them influence your decisions! And isn't that another subtler form of control? Isn't then better to just do what suits you in the moment? Who cares if it follows some god's supposed plan, as long as it makes you happy! What really counts in the end is just what you want! That's what only matters to me!"

She stopped to catch her breath, fully aware that it was however too late, she had mistakenly revealed too much.

"I..." That single word drowned in his throat, dying with the rest of an unformed rebuttal. For once, her violent declaration left him speechless. That small slip of tongue was of little consequence though, it had to happen, sooner or later, even if she was not fully ready. She would follow her own advice then, and just ride the moment. Miraak, however...

"_...In order to subdue this chaotic world, to set things right..."_

She remembered too well, all those snippets from his monologues, tipping her off about the true depth of his delusions. Trying to understand the encompassing designs of Aedra and Daedra, that was the main downfall of all mages and priests. Too smart and presumptuous for their own good, they inevitably lost themselves in the divine chaos, forgetting to fully live their transient time, like him. And unfortunately for her, Miraak was both at the same time.

She tried to peek for some clue from the slits of the mask, but he tilted his chin downward, a clear sign that he was still dwelling on what she had said. However, he hissed with a strangled, uncharacteristic inflection, as if it was costing him every effort to talk to her. "He fancies himself to be the Gardener of Men."

The grip on his collar abruptly loosened and her chest slackened back in shock. There was a reason she had never heard that inflection from him. It was shame. She stared astonished at him, entranced by the flickering reflections in his golden mask. It was crystal clear now, why he trashed around so violently against any inkling of Hermeus Mora's manipulation.  
She swallowed with uneasiness. Gardener, such a poetic way to sugar-coat its true meaning. It must have been tearing his pride apart. She sighed, so all of his unexplained, random moments of evasiveness had little to do with her then. The implications though, tasted bitter in her palate, they did not favour her plans at all.

"When did you come to that conclusion?" She finally dared to ask, in a cracked murmur.  
"From the very moment he let us free." His sombre tone, a pale shadow of his previous assertiveness, matched her soft one.  
"But you've always suspected."  
"Yes."  
"Since when?" She dreaded the answer, but she needed a confirmation to her hunch.  
"From the beginning."

She pinched the bridge of her nose and shut her eyes. That explained his baffling breakdown in Apocrypha. The realization that he managed to keep all of that bottled up, so well hidden from her and for such a long time, was just jarring. And nonetheless he had continued to seek comfort from her. She sighed, to think that she really wanted such a complicated mess. "But in Apocrypha it was Akatosh you always kept mentioning. There's more, right?"

His silence, the very fact that he did not deny her assumption, just spoke volumes. Even then, after all they had been sharing, he was still retaining part of his thoughts. She pushed his shoulders harder and gnashed inflamed. "Tell me!"

A hoarse, wounded growl, full of grudge, leaked out from his mask. "I wondered so many times, why he allowed me to stray from his design."  
"Go on." She pressed.  
"I did not stray at all. I am a last resort plan, in case you failed. Or became a threat."

She relaxed her hold, the implications dancing wildly in her head. From that point of view, it all made more sense. She had always been sure that Akatosh too, despised Alduin for his mendacity. He first claimed to be a god, then had the audacity to spread rumours of being an aspect of the very father himself. If it was true, why would then Akatosh create a _dovahkiin_? To destroy himself? No, Akatosh had planned everything to punish his arrogant son and, as the god of time, he very well knew that Alduin would jump through time.

Miraak had never been needed in his own era, Kynareth had intervened then, through Paarthurnax. So he had instead been parked in Apocrypha, to refine his knowledge as a potential fill-in.

"Do you really believe to be... believe so?" She was at first going to blurt out 'replacement', but did not dare to throw salt in a suppurated wound. She could not hide her consternation though, even if she knew how much he hated to be pitied. If Miraak was right, the way he was still being used was just plain cruel.

He did not nod, nor added anything more, but just remained still, hiding his thoughts behind that bothersome mask. She stared at it irked, always in the damn way. No, she decided, there was no other possible way. She had to dive now to the bottom, before he sealed his thoughts again, but her guts would not last, if he kept wearing it.

With a gentleness completely opposite to her previous outburst, she unclasped the hidden clips that kept the mask attached to the hood, and then put it aside.  
He let her, he was too lost in his own moping to protest, but he was still not crossing her gaze. His stare was unfocused at some far away spot, and that was not good. She was going to say it only once, as it went against everything one side of her dragon soul stood for, concession. The other side instead roared, ready to strike. Whatever a _dovah _wanted, a _dovah _took, no matter the means. So she cupped his face and readied herself. It had to be done.

"Do you know why I fully embraced Akatosh's path?"

That caught his full attention, his black eyes now sharply pinned on her own. He had never remarked about it out loud, but he had never understood how someone so hotheaded like her, could remain so passive in front of the ruthless machinations of the gods. It took her a great amount of will to keep up with his intense stare, and maintain a steady voice.

"Because it has given me everything I could ask for. Recognition, power, fame." She could see, from the tightening of his eyes, that he was taking her admission in the wrong way, as a haughty criticism at his perceived failures, and so she added hastily, before he could utter anything spiteful. "You. And maybe in the future also a... family."

In the end she faltered, all assertiveness lost after whispering such a simple word. Revealing her innermost, secret desire like that, without any shield, it was taking more courage than she would have ever imagined. More than raising for the first time a sword against Mirmulnir, or entering Sovengarde to face the World Eater. He parted his lips to say something, but she stopped him, putting a hand over his mouth, and pressed on, before she got cold feet, and lowered her chin to hide her nervousness.

"Now, the important question is..." And part of the dragon trembled, because Miraak was more than_dovah_, he was _dovahkiin_, and those that preserved intact their _sil _did not lay a custom-made weapon in the hands of a cunning _mun_. The other part instead, roared and nose-dived, because only those with true_ahkrin _were worthy of true _krongrah_. "Do you want to follow that path? Because I can't... if you don't."

She did not dare to rise her head and see his expression, her courage had vanished.  
Now he had the choice to decide he so longed for.  
The silence was deafening, but she waited nonetheless.  
She gritted her teeth, the bastard was keeping her on her toes, how dared he. To think she was taking all the brunt, as usual.

"Don't be a damn coward! Grow some balls, for Azura!" She screeched in his face. And then, to her chagrin, she noticed. "Oh." He held her wrist and moved her hand away from his mouth.  
"I cannot answer if you don't let me." Nor his expression, nor his deadpan voice gave anything away, he just looked pensively at her. At least he did not sound offended. Divines, how idiotic. She closed her eyes and stifled a groan. She must have been more nervous than she believed, to be so absent-minded. She preferred ten times fighting dragons to this.

He grabbed her hands to calm them down. She didn't notice that she was fiddling with the hem of his robe. A small smile graced his lips, his gaze unusually soft, as if he had caught the real intention behind her little ploy. However, there was a strange tinge of sadness behind that softness, that worried her even more.

"We will have to find a way to cut all affiliations with Hermaeus Mora, first," he murmured quietly, "Apocrypha is not a proper place to grow up children." And then her indignant gasp tore a large, amused smirk, as she blushed in embarrassment and exasperation. One day she was going to choke him for real. "Can't you just say a simple yes, for once in your bloody life?" Her high pitched voice, no matter her irritation, still trembled. He had the audacity to laugh.  
"No. Or should I say yes?"  
"Akatosh only knows why I ever bother with you!"  
"Ah, such a short memory span. You have just said it, for a _family._" Not even a minute and he was already rubbing it in! Sithis and damnation, the things she did to win. Now he was going to forever bring that up too, at every occasion. She gritted her teeth, it took all of her self-restraint to not punch that crooked, cocky grin of his.  
And then a very interesting deduction occurred to her, and she smiled cheekily in return. "So, you do really think we are fated by the gods!" She squeaked in delight, hardly holding back her laugh. He frowned in a vain tentative of appearing forbidding, however he could not stop a pale rosy tint from colouring his sharp cheekbones.  
"Of course, of all the things I tell you, you have to fixate on that." He gritted clearly embarrassed, muttering more to himself than really talking to her. Her smile widened in an insolent grin, the rush of victory left her too giddy to be even a bit considerate. That moment was too satisfying to let it finish soon, she had to quickly poke for more. "Well, it is not my fault if my memory is so awesome and crafty."  
"Crafty?" He chuckled darkly, a bass huskiness seeping in, and he rested the cold tip of his nose on the bare skin behind her ear. "Do not ever presume for a moment, that I do not catch those little, clumsy machinations of yours." His breath was steaming though, and she shuddered. "To accomplish that," he seared her skin with a deliberate slow kiss, "you need to improve your speech skills first."

The breeze of the night tickled the damp spot he left exposed, his lips now inches from hers, teasing her with an indolent, self-assured smirk. She languidly moistened her lips, her cheeks already flushed, and slightly frowned. "So now, you think to have the upper hand."

He hushed her, holding her face to gently pry her lips with his tongue, enticing their parting. A moan escaped from her throat as he deepened the kiss, before tantalizingly shirking away. "I do." He rumbled hoarsely, satisfied of her erratic intakes of air.  
"You don't." She managed to rasp out. He arched an eyebrow sceptically, so she went on. "I don't need to refine my speech at all. You see," she whispered sultry, but with a naughty gleam in her eyes that warned him to be wary, "I already know what to say to make you do everything I want." She stressed those last three words just to irk him more, while caressing the line of his jaw.

He tightened his lips to stifle a chuckle, as his eyes glinted in challenge. "Really," he drawled wryly, "well then, prove it."  
A thrill coursed through her veins, as he willingly swallowed hook, line and sinker. It was so obviously a provocation, but of course he wouldn't back off. She licked her lips deviously, already foretasting the raw shock that he would not be able to hide in time, and tightly hugged his neck, resting her chin on his shouder so that she could whisperdirectly in his ear. Well, he had asked for it. She was going to drag him down, into the same abyss of craziness she was drowning, no matter which shameless wile, as he liked to call them, she had to resort to.

"I want your thick sword buried inside my little tight sheath," she breathed hotly, "I want you to make me beg for more, all night long. And I want to play all those little dark fantasies I know you have." She couldn't refrain from sniggering evilly at his shocked intake of breath. She could savour his slight shiver, from the way her body was pressed against his, but it was not enough, she had to push even further, now that he was out of his depths, or he would start to retaliate too soon.

"It excites you, doesn't it?" She egged him on, renewing her sultriness with a touch of pure wantonness. "To hear the little _dovahdin_ say such dirty, lewd things!" No, she would have never shown so much bravado, if there was even the slightest doubt of being rejected. And then, to his helpless dismay, she got even more audacious, when her hand slipped down to rest on an unmistakable bulge.

"Always the lecherous, horny, old man." A giddy giggle escaped when he flinched, unwillingly showing how much she could easily affect him, and so she slightly brushed her lips against his earlobe to tease him more. "So choose, _Diist Dovahkiin_," she added relentless, her breathy whisper rich of restrained laugh, "who will I be tonight? The helpless maiden or the hungry _dovah_?" Yes, that was the final strike, now she only had to enjoy the satisfying results.

"You..." He was so shaken, that he was not even trying to mask the strain in his cracked voice. "The same subtlety..." He hissed through clenched teeth. She felt how he hid his face in the curve of her neck, and she revelled in it, resting a hand on the back of his head. "...of a drove of mammoths!" He grasped tightly her waist, squeezing her hips as if he was torn on what to do, push her off his lap for her indecent impertinence or press her against his loins even harder. In the end she decided for him, crossing her legs and arms behind his back. "_Kyne, hiif zey..."_ His muffled, almost imperceptible swearing, sounded more like a hoarse, exasperated whine, after she rubbed her hips against his. Much later, she would have dared to claim it was just a bit of persuasion. Meanwhile though, she just persisted even more shamelessly, chuckling at his discomfort, while slipping off both of her gloves.

"I'm waiting," she continued to whisper unabashedly, as her bare fingers proceeded to unhook one by one the hidden clasps of his collar, "or should I choose for you?" One hand slithered under the loosened hem, caressing the tense muscles under his jaw.

"You think to be so smart," he tried to hiss and recompose himself in some way, "to have me figured out." She was smothering his neck with kisses though. "You know nothing!" It was supposed to be a reproachful bark, but instead died to a hoarse, guttural groan.  
"Then tell me." She managed to prompt between her fervent assault, nothing stopping her wandering hands from pulling the fastenings of his robes.  
"It will be Mora's." Despite his distress, he couldn't refrain some huskiness from seeping out, not when her palms slowly stroke his bare chest, in a slow and deliberately promiscuous motion.  
"It won't." She answered back eagerly, as she left a trail of sloppy, little love bites around his collarbone, while one of her hands started to fight with the unfamiliar clasps of her new armour. "As long as it is conceived in Nirn." And then threw at him a feral, cheeky grin, that was not reassuring at all.

Miraak's slightly glazed eyes visibly widened, like a cornered prey after sensing some hidden danger. "You... researched." He simply uttered dismayed, through his short intakes of breath.

Yes, the very fact that she spent time and energies to investigate about that matter was an extraordinary event, and uncharacteristically sneaky to boot. He was finally witnessing on his own skin the true depths of her pigheadedness, an unshakable determination that unfailingly surged when she truly wanted to clutch her claws onto something. She just nodded, flashing another wider mischievous smile, as she almost tore the last fastening.

"Since when?" He rumbled accusingly, but she just snickered unaffected, his nonplussed and flushed face was not even a tiny little bit as intimidating as he hoped it would be.  
"Since I've read the Mara's pamphlets. Surprise!" She even had the audacity to chirp that with no self-consciousness.

What was supposed to be a snort, came out as a gravelly, exasperated groan. It had been so obvious, he should have seen it coming from miles away, from all those strange, silly, unrelated topics she had started to discuss with him in Apocrypha, with no apparent reason. For the sake of curiosity, she had said. She was just getting bored, she had been complaining about that, so why not indulging her a little? And with all her constant chatting about absurd trivialities, he had ended to just believe it. So she had been plotting and scheming, if her blunt nagging on certain topics could be called so, from a long time then.

"Well," she went on, oblivious or just uncaring of his astonishment, "I believed it had to wait at least some centuries, seeing the pace of your research, so... It was just a little fancy, you see. A possibility. But now that we are here, I have pondered..." Her chest armour finally dropped with a loud clang on the floor, and so she encircled her arms around his torso, and bent to whisper sultrily in his ear, pressing her soft breasts against his chest for another assault.

"You said you would have provided for anything I would ever need..." She stressed the last word meaningfully, daring to twist his gallant offer for her own benefit. "Did you lie?" He could not resent her taunt though, it was devoid of any malice, even when she slowly pressed her whole weight against his loins, slightly pushing forward her hips.

"No," his breath was shaky, "of course not." They both knew he was but a step away to cave in, to any of her outlandish whims. "Then provide." Her breathy, unsubtle prodding sounded even more compelling thanks to those tempting, tiny hands, that massaged his shoulder blades and teased his spine with their delicate fingertips. He closed his eyes, stifling a shudder, and she licked her lips. Yes, he was finally going to give in.

"The Dark Brotherhood." He abruptly rasped in a low grunt, a clear tentative to distract himself from her coarse, but very effective seduction. "When were you thinking about telling me?" It was almost endearing how he kept forcing his voice to sound reproachful. It was not working though, not when she gently laid her hands on his jaw to tip his head, and slightly bent it nearer.

"They are always after me," She whispered with unmasked affection, her lips lingering over his, "for some reason." And left on them a tantalizing peck full of promises. "I just... forgot." She tilted her head to deepen her next kiss, but he roughly grabbed her wrists.  
"Always the reckless fool! I will have to stay on guard, then," he growled harshly, "I can't protect you if..." and he briefly stopped to fumble for an appropriate term, "... I am distracted." He managed to choke out. How ironic it was, he behaving like a responsible, self-restrained prude, just when she was doing her best to slowly wrap him in her warm ensnarement. She was getting tired or his stubborn resistance though. Yes, in the beginning it had given her the thrill of a safely victory, but now it was getting just irritating.

"I don't need your protection now, you stupid idiot!" She abruptly screamed as she roughly shook his shoulders, she had always been able to keep at bay those pesky assassins before, and besides, that was beyond the point. "Don't play the fool! You know exactly what I want!" Any trace of her previous, sultry coddling was swept away by the high screech of her temper tantrum. "So give it to me, now!"

She had never seen Miraak's face blanch, nor his eyes widen like that, staring at her like he was for the first time truly seeing her true facet. However he recomposed himself as fast as his shocked flinch. A blank, impenetrable expression returned to cover his inner thoughts like a thick veil.

"Very well," His tone suddenly reacquired his previous assertiveness, even though it was still unreadable, like its guarded gaze. "If that is what you truly wish..." She should have known, that only a direct, pushy demand would have gotten the desired effect from him. However, the smooth, deep quality of his voice was tainted by a strange touch of weary resignation, like her outburst had finally cracked some kind of frayed resolution he had been clinging on until then. She just forgot about it though, and just shivered with a strange, faint sense of foreboding, when she saw the raw intensity in his calculating gaze, as he dampened his lips. He pulled her away from his lap, forcing her to stand up. Her fiery protest doused in her tongue though, when his fingers slowly pulled down the strings of her modest undergarment, until it fell at her feet.

"Touch yourself." He deliberately pronounced those words slowly, with a cold, challenging edge, as his hands slowly caressed the contours of her large, soft hips. His piercing gaze roamed around the plump curves of her exposed body with such raw, undisguised voracity, that she felt the sudden, inexplicable urge to shield her breasts from his view.  
"What?" she managed to squeak out, as she instinctively snuggled her arms around her chest, her bafflement badly masked. He remained impassible instead, and just tutted in mild mockery, as he grasped her wrists and pried them away from her breasts. "You are not deaf, my dear. I said, touch yourself." It wasn't just the uncharacteristic direct rawness of his unexpected request, or the scorching intensity of his shameless perusal, there was also a deep, undefined undercurrent she had never sensed before and could not recognize, behind the richness of his lustful tone, that made her strangely uneasy.

"I..." Her next words drowned in the sea of her fumbled, racing thoughts, as she tried to contain her growing nervousness. What was happening to her? Just an instant ago, she had been perfectly in control and sure of what she was doing, but now her instinct would not stop to prickle the back of her mind in warning. Something in the air had shifted, and she had no idea about what it was. He just chuckled derisively at her ill-concealed fidgeting, with the smug satisfaction of someone being proven right.

"In the end," he abruptly turned her over and pushed her down, to sit again on his lap, "no matter how brazenly the little _dovahdin _acts," his husky growl rumbled next to her ear, as his chin tilted down to rest on the curve of her shoulder, "she had but only bathed in the safest, warm surface." An arm clasped tightly around her waist, trapping also her arms, and pushed her back even closer to his bare chest. "Never drowned in _mun_ raw, deepest _smoliin_." The soft brushing of his lips on her cheek tempered the harshness of his low hiss, and distracted her from hearing the metallic clack of his loosened belt.  
"It is time to remedy that, or else," he added, as his knees slightly lifted her legs and parted them widely apart, "the little _dov_ will never learn to stay away from its deep end." There was a different, kind of threat darkening his words. She shuddered violently, and not just from the night breeze tickling her heaving breasts.

"We shouldn't... here," she stuttered self-conscious, trying to reason with him, when she felt one hand slowly slipping down, caressing her navel, "like this," she looked around frantically, never having felt so exposed in such way before, "anyone could see us!" For the first time, the small, dim fire of the camp seemed too bright and luminous to her eyes, and the wild, rich vegetation of the Rift not dense enough to properly hide their presence from unwanted stares.

"Having second thoughts, now?" A mocking, warm whisper caressed her ear, as his large fingertips slid between her soaked nether lips. Her cheeks reddened from the pleasurable tingling of their lingering, slow strokes. "You said anything, remember?" And his knees spread her thighs even more, forcing her to slightly bend back her head on his shoulder.

She tried to form a coherent reply, but only a gasped moan came out from her parted lips, when the sinking of his intrusive, large fingers forced her hips to buck against his pressing palm.

"So is it this, then?" She finally managed to croak out, in a contradictory mixture of embarrassed distress, plain irritation, and twisted, hungry arousal. "Letting someone see me in this state?" She could have easily stopped that little perversion of his, his grasp around her waist was not that strong to prevent her from wiggling out and slap him hard in the face. However, her own insatiable, brash curiosity was quickly outweighing her initial skittish uneasiness. It was the first time that Miraak willingly let his most dark and well hidden, licentious side run unmasked, at least in front of her.

"Oh, yes," he grunted hoarsely with twisted appreciation, "let them all see." However, it was only when she felt the tip of his hardness slip inside her folds, that she finally caught what he was truly trying to accomplish. "How undone you become, when you get speared by my length." The real reason he decided to finally give her a little peek at the rotten pit of his curbed lust. "How you writhe and clamp around it for more." His husky hiss was harsh and feral. He was trying to scare her off.

"And this, little _dovahdin_, it's only a taste." Even if he was deeply buried inside her, he was not thrusting though, not even moving an inch. "You will learn to not toy with a prey that can and _will_ overcome you."

His gloved fingers kept rubbing around her drenched and swollen little spot, while leaving her so deliciously overfilled without any of its relieving, craved friction, just on purpose. She bit her lip to stifle a frustrated whine, but he heard its feeble sob nonetheless, and slightly chuckled with vindictive satisfaction, while his other hand slithered upwards, to fondle her breast. His scorching, dampened lips slowly descended from her jaw to the crook of her neck and parted to press a teasing, lingering bite. He was slowly driving her mad with raw need.

Even in her dazed state though, the implication of his last admission did not escape her feverish mind, nor the glimpse of festered resentment emerging from his threat. After everything they had gone through together, that paranoid idiot was still doubtful. Suspicious. Afraid she was just taking advantage of what he perceived as one of his most debilitating weaknesses.

"Why," she murmured breathlessly, "why do you always think I'm fooling around?" Her hand delicately rested on his cheek and forced him to tilt his face towards hers, so that their foreheads would only be slightly apart.  
"I'm not a fool. All of this is too good to be true." it happened just in a fraction, a blink of an eyebrow, but she noticed it nonetheless, even if she had to bury her face in his neck to smother an irrepressible moan of pleasure, when he unintentionally jerked his hips upwards. For a moment his voice had faltered with uncertainty. It was strange how she could relate, to that primordial, persistent fear of being rejected, after someone had seen beyond the façade, straight at the most unappealing parts of the hidden self.

"What? That you have won?" To concede such validation, she was obviously too drunk, in that sea of dense, overwhelming crave. Not thinking clearly. And wasn't exactly that what he had always wanted from the very beginning? It made no sense otherwise. Sparing her after her defeat, remaining trapped in Apocrypha instead of devouring her soul, his persistent, calculated seduction. Looking for her in Riften. Enduring all of her rage fits and silly quirks. "Haven't I always been your little coveted prize?" She instinctively jerked her hips to slide around his length, but even if she tensed her legs, the tips of her feet could not reach the ground and push her up.

"No, a prize is bestowed after proving oneself worthy." His husky growl became erratic and softer, clearly affected by her admission and her helpless writhing against his lap. "You, my dear, are my spoils." Such a crude, possessive claim, uttered just a brush away from her yearning, reddened lips, with that tinge of passionate affection. It made her already quivering body shake. Spoils, how fitting was that term. Miraak did not expect recognition for his good efforts, he just conquered, plundered and ravished what he desired, like he was doing now, and had been doing from the start, besieging her body and heart until they both crumbled down. What could she say about herself then, that now willingly opened her gates and gladly welcomed his assaults?

"Now show me." His husky rumble tickled her ear with another delicate warm puff of moist air, and she shivered, lost in the the sensation. His fingers quickened their motions around her aching, drenched mound, and small, sobbing whines escaped from her shaky breathing. "Prove how much you love this." He spurred her on, repeatedly brushing her sensitized, aching core, as she moaned and wriggled against his chest, unable to buck against his still hardness. "How much you love me." It was his faltering, warm breathing against her ear, and that rough, thick yearning, vibrating unrestrained from the recess of his hoarse voice, that finally lifted her towards that unreachable, yet so frustratingly near, craved peak of raw release, unleashing a burst of piercing, blind delight, that melted her body in overwhelming, strong waves of pleasurable relief.

"Yes, like that," his low, suffering hiss nonetheless, cut through her dense veil of stupor, and she truly savoured for the first time, now that he was not plunging hard and fast inside her, how tightly her inner walls clutched and squeezed, over and over, his trapped cock, at every new sharp hiccup of waning pleasure.

Her trembling limbs however, had no chance to submerge in the sweet tides of afterglow, her intake of breath suddenly interrupted from the impact of her back against the warm, grassy ground near the camp-fire. She did not have the time to blink, that Miraak was already hovering over her little frame, spreading her thighs around his torso, his whole length already buried inside her burning, slippery slit. His deep thrusts had no trace of gentleness, they were rough, sharpened by his bottled-up, licentious urges, but she could sense however, that he was still restraining a part of it, his nature yet unable to totally forgo control even for a brief time. Or perhaps, knowing his rooted, natural distrust, he still believed she would flee away if he let it all out.

"Don't hold back," she encouraged, her palms wandering under his robes, to encircle his bare back. She pushed him towards her, until his sweaty, reddened forehead was just inches away from brushing hers. "Just let it go." She crossed her calves around his back, never severing her half-lidded eyes from his darkening, veiled gaze, as his pace became gradually faster and harsher. "I will embrace it all, I promise." She whispered, after pressing softly her lips against his, and something warm, undefinable, flickered wild in the pitch blackness of his eyes.

"_Mul-Qah-Div._" It was a broken murmur, uttered with little breath, but the force contained in those words vibrated strong enough to unlock and set free his Dragon Aspect. Never before, any of those vigorous, golden flames had ever had a chance to brush any tiny part of her bare body. She quivered from the intense dizziness, as they quickly permeated into her skin at the slightest touch, filling her with an intoxicating and feverish, growing warmth. The same heady heat of a leaking Dragon Soul, on the verge of being released and devoured. She embraced him tighter, famished, like the nearness could quench the rampant crave that little taste had abruptly awakened.

"Yes, let the _dovah_ unleashed, my _morwuld_!" She moaned inebriated in his ear, clutching his dark hair, as his nose pressed against her mane, and her body continued to imbibe the twirling, wild flames, like parched soil.

"Let it out, all that _mul_!" A deep, hoarse groan rumbled from over her shoulder, as his cock plunged relentlessly against her, with fast, irregular thrusts. "Yes, like that!" From the way his uneven, heavy breathing, let escape some deep, gravelly moans, she knew he was far gone too.

"Show me, show me!" If she had been lucid, she would not have recognized the delirious high pitch of her raspy screams, nor the way she desperately clung to him. "How much you love this!" Her arms clasped even more tightly his torso. "How much you love me! Give me all! All!" His teeth sank in the crook of her neck, hard, and she instinctively tensed, paralysed. His golden aura abruptly flared, overwhelming, as his hips jerked uncontrollably, until his pulsing hardness twitched and swiftly sank again with a last deep, hard thrust.

A deep, guttural roar seeped from his throat, and her nails clawed his back, leaving behind red, long, deep gashes. Her lips parted, the need of howling irresistible, but a wave of dense, irrepressible pleasure overtook her trembling, sweaty thighs, flooding fast throughout her drowning, entangled limbs, sweeping away even her voice. A familiar rush of liquid warmness diffused through her low abdomen, as his back shook and his cock continued to jerk, squeezed inside her clamping, warm walls, with brief, erratic shoves, until his muscles suddenly lost all their strength and his whole weight squashed her breathless frame.

Miraak remained motionless over her, laying down on her soft, warm curves, too weary and shaken from what had happened, to even dare to lift his head and cross her gaze. It was only after some time, when he heard the regular rhythm, of her deep, slow breaths, that he strained again his limbs to delicately disentangle from her. He took off his outer robe, and covered her already sleeping form.

He briefly contemplated her sated expression and sighed, as he sprawled near her side. One of his arms rested over his forehead, and he looked intently through half-lidded eyes at the bright night sky.

"_Sahlo, mey mun_." He softly uttered to himself, too tired to even frown. He closed his eyes, as traces of afterglow still tingled through his numbed body. His resolution had lasted only eight days.

* * *

**Dovah Language:**

**Sil = **soul

**Mun = **man

**Ahkrin = **courage

**Krongrah = **victory

**Kyne, hiif zey = **Kyne, help me

**Dovahdin = **dragon maiden

**Smoliin = **passion

**Morwuld = **cyclone

**Sahlo, mey mun= **Weak, foolish man

* * *

**Author's notes:**

**I finally managed to finish this chapter, yay. As you can see Bree now wants to install the Hearthfire expansion, teehee. Poor Miraak. ****I hope this update is long and good enough to compensate for the delay. I'm afraid next chapter will be published later like this one, as the night shifts will last for another two weeks. They are really putting a dent to my sexy-times muse. She only wants to sleep, watch Once upon a Time, and sleep again. That lazy slacker. By the way, I think I fell in love with pinchitosmcpupas's drawing of unmasked Miraak in Tumblr. Sharing the awesomeness, in case you haven't seen it yet.**

**To Trace: Thank you for your kindness. I hope the delay wasn't too much annoying. I too don't like to wait too long, so I perfectly understand the feeling.**

**Ferkinderkin: I'm glad you feel so, thanks.**

**FoAteaZombie: Updated!**

**Sihayya: Yes, the Dark Brotherhood is a real pain when one plays a good character, it is always trying to ambush the DB in all possible places and how hard their daggers hit! So I got the inspiration from that, and yes, unlike the game, there is a reason, but it will be revealed a bit later.**

**New Reader: We will see if DB will manage to extort something from him, he is always a hard nut to crack.**

**Evil is Relative: Yes DB is a bit lost, she's too inexperencied too handle well the situation, but as you can see she is trying to turn in some way the game in her favour.**

**Violence is Always the Answer: Thank you!**

**Guest2: I have no idea how you manage to play without mods, I am addicted to them! Pity they somehow end to corrupt my save files, even when I'm very careful.**

**Ms. Bloodmoon: Yes, those in Bethesda, why did they not leave an alternative ending? Thankfully there are the mods, though. Yeah, there are, I've spotted some too and I'm planning to make a general correction after I completed the fic.**

**An Avid Fan: It's a bit difficult. There's this little issue of Bree's nasty temper, and then she's not alluring enough to make a man think it is worth the headache. However Miraak is paranoid enough to get worried that others may see in her the same of what he sees. Mm, I make no promises.**

**Tsk tsk: Technically, not true. There is the whole town of Raven Rock, then the sailors of the 'North Maiden', and many people in Windhelm. She staid two days in Riften, enough time for some undercover assassin in town to get a message from some informer, or get there. The Dark Brotherhood worked without the Night Mother and nobody ever noticed, thus it had to have a very tight web of underground connections.**

**ReaderKeyboard: Yes I agree with you, even if Miraak is a domineering character, the DB can't become a doormat, it would be out of character, and vice versa. A leopard doesn't change its spots, after all. In my humble opinion, a one-sided power relationship becomes quickly boring, unbelievable and too predictable. Your English is pretty good, don't worry!**

**Guest: Done!**


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